Slashdot Mirror
Where Do Dummy Email Addresses Go?
ajain writes "Maybe a year and a half back or so, I started using someone@somewhere.com as a dummy email id in online blogs, guestboks, forums, and sundry pages. But then I started wondering what if someone actually tried to email me on that email address. I was sure that it would bounce because I assumed that there wouldn't be an actual email address like that. In any case, just for fun, I decided to google on someone@somewhere.com. And lo behold, there are some 4090 results! I have written a small article at my blog and a reader says NoOne@NoWhere.com is another contender. Do you use some common dummy email IDs too, to get around the privacy problem online? Isn't there a potential for malicious misuse of someone's email ID in this way?"
how many people fill out bill.g@microsoft.com (or something similar)
the answer is "yes", move along.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I like to use a@b.com, and find that it is taken on many sites.
I usually use support@microsoft.com
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
random@example.com
So, what is your favorite dummy e-mail address???
I like asdf@lkj.com
"Curiouser and Curiouser" - Alice
I usually use no@no.com. Never checked if it exists.
Error 404 - Sig Not Found
sadfd@afds.com
Please tell me email to example.com really does go nowhere where it costs people money... I can't count the number of places I've used that anymore.
"Consider yourself a member of a virtual corporation with Mr. Torvalds as your Chief Executive Officer." - Linux Advocac
I usually use support@microsoft.com. Hasn't let me down yet.
Poor owner of that address. These days, though, I use @example.com wherever possible because I know it won't go anywhere at all. It's not a bad idea for other people to use it when they can, either.
I always use asdf@asdf.com
seems I'm not alone:
http://www.asdf.com/asdfemail.html
http://www.asdf.com/whatisasdf.html
Strangely enough, somewhere.com offers anti-spam services as well as other consulting things. Could it be that they have set up someone@somewhere.com as a black hole to track spammers? That sure would rock. There is always some misuse when you post your email address online. Don't do it. Simply code a form for contacting you via email and let PHP or whatever send it to you behind the scenes. This halts any kind of email harvesting, and results in the use of faked email addresses, or obvious ones, like admin@DOMAIN.com or whatever. If you have a catchall, you should disable it and let them all bounce. When enough email bounces, someone somewhere will figure out something to solve the problem of spam, or run of the mill spammers will just give up.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
www.asdf.com :)
I'm sure there is lots of abuse
I've typed mom or dad and had my client not substitute the address, so this could happen by accident quite likely.
Generally I use root@localhost, or the site (here I might use root@slashdot)
I use nobody@example.com since that address will never resolve. Most application forms won't care though.
Way way back when, I used to mess around with pre-written VB (VB 3,4) modules already set up with API to interface with AOL. You could make a mail bomber and other malicious programs with very little actual programming experience. I remember testing my work on "Screenname@aol.com". I assumed that since AOL often used the handle to indicate where to use a screenname, it couldn't actually be someone's screenname. Wrong. He emailed me back after I sent him a few thousand emails, threatening to report me.
fake@fakemail.com
Or if the form is particularly stupid, fake@fakemail.fake. I love that one.
Why do I do it? Well, I need a usable inbox, and a useable inbox isn't one who is getting hit with (or sorting out with filters) site's advertisements that I have no interest in.
Actually i use spam@your.ass
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
I always used root@localhost as the replyto when I posted to usenet, let the spambots pick that one up...
At the bottom of the endless pile of paper work which characterizes all regulation lies a gun.
Alan Greenspan
i usually use nospam@please.com
SHE does throw dice.
I usually use xxx@yyy.com
I used to use the ones you describe, as well as "fatchance@nospam.com." Then, I discovered Mailinator. This is pretty handy. You make up an address @mailinator.com. Mail can go there, and the address is "created" on the fly. Later, if you are really interested (say, a registration for a newspaper site), you can pick up the mail. After a few hours, the account is deleted.
joe@shmoe.com. And no, I don't think this is a problem. Nobody actually has that e-mail address. If someone does have that e-mail address they are probably so burdened with junk and spam I hope they are smart enough to get a new one. Anyways, shmoe.com is a a cyber-squatter or some such, so screw them. Using a real address of another person as your dummy address is another story.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
...don.t.call.me@i.ll.call.you.com. If this is an actual destination, I apologize for the excessive solicitations for enormous ass porn.
Back in the day there was a web site, anti-social.com that gave out free email @anti-social.com. So I grabbed letthemdie@anti-social.com and used that whenever I had to give an address to something I didn't want to give an address to, just to be an ass.
The original Anti-social.com faded away in the mid-90's. It's rather interesting to note that now, when I point my browser to anti-social.com it redirects me to the offical Bush-Cheney '04 blog. How bizzare. What's up with that?
I usually use webmaster@, and I check all of the "Email me adverts for all this shit!" boxes, too. Let that teach 'em to harvest emails for spam!
I always use aap@hotmail.com (aap is monkey in dutch) as a bogus address, but it's pretty probable this addy is in use and that i will be haunted from now on by it's owner..
I usually sign up with the adress of people I hate. Right now it's that smelly boy in 5th grade who never would shut up about his baseball card collection.
me@privacy.net is a legitimate address that can be used. I either use that one or nobody@this.address
I usually use user@name.com Never thought about if someone uses it...
The domain "example.com" is reserved for exactly this purpose.
However, I find that for cases where you can be reasonably certain your address is NEVER going to be used for legitimate purposes (such as cases like this where the context implies the address is useless and it will only be treated as real by harvesters), you can skip the middle man by using uce@ftc.gov
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
You never signed up your friend for a porn service as a joke? I thought that was standard adolescent fare. The more random the porn, with limits obviously, the better.
someone@somewhere.com, fist@fuck.com, root@redhat.com, eat@me.com, etc.
Most programs and sites happily take -@-.- which isnt even valid.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It's an example domain, set aside to be used as an example.
There are plenty of places you can safely point to. It's fair to assume that mailboxes at example.{com|net|org} are unmonitored. There's also me@privacy.net which bounces email with a polite notice that you don't want email from the sender. Spamcop provides the conspicuous nobody@devnull.spamcop.net, originally provided for users of their newsgroups but open to all and of course you can just use fake tlds like nobody@fake.invalid which will always be rejected before the email even leaves the spammer's servers.
If you do want to recieve email but only, say, once from a company then you'll be looking at SpamGourmet which provides simple, free, fowarding addresses that expire after X hits.
A couple of years ago, I gave someone my e-mail address over the phone as 'first-name dot last-name at provider dot net'. Luckily they read it back to me.
:-)
firstname.lastname@provider.net
I had to point out that my first name was Vlad and last name Inhaler (ok, I'm lying but you get the point). That is probably another address each provider has which gets a lot of spam
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
... i still have to ask a guy named Donald working for Disney and a guy named Dubya working at the whitehouse, if they ever received any mail for me.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
support@verizon.com is what I use. I started doing this after they screwed over 2600 a little while back.
Must be slow news day... but then again, I'm taking the time to reply to this...
1) When someone tries to send an email to a non-existent address, either the mail server at that domain will rejct (or swallow) the email. If the domain doesn't exist, your mailer will bounce it back to you. There is no internet equivalent of the 'dead letter office' where all the mail sent to Santa goes.
2) Potenial for abuse? Well, that is why so many listservs actually send a confirmation email that you have to reply to. Email is inherintly insecure, but this is at least something. This is just the internet's equivalent to signing someone up to receive magazine subscriptions they didn't ask for. Nothing new here... move along.
poop@fart.com
cant@tell.com
Once Upon A Time, a friend of mine had a domain that spelled a major ISPs name backwards (he registered it on purpose, and joked that he was the "anti-big vendor" and gave shell accounts to friends, friends of friends, etc.
Then, someone started posting to usenet a lot, who was a customer of Big Vendor , and he 'spam-proofed' his address by ever so cleverly spelling it backwards.
Suddenly dozens if not hundreds of undeliverable messages started landing on Mike's server for some clown over at ReallyBigISP.
So, like any good sysadmin, he corrected this oversight, adding a sendmail rule to deliver mail for jrluser@psigib.com to jrluser@bigisp.com.
The moral of the story: Do not create harm for some innocent third party with your spam evasion techniques. It may come back to haunt you.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
as the owner of a fairly popular domain name (and the sole user of the name, and no, I'm not naming it), I get a lot -- A LOT -- of email that is obviously the result of people using my domain name for "fake" addresses. It's annoying. 99.999% of the mail is spam. Thousands of pieces of mail per week. When Trustic was in beta, I made very good use of the spam. Oh yes. It all went into Trustic. It was very satisfying.
Another comon one, asdf.com (you need to use qwerty and not dvorak to see why :)
I had been using this email for 3 or more years until I found that life.org really exists...
Maybe a year and a half back or so, I started using someone@somewhere.com as a dummy email id in online blogs, guestboks, forums, and sundry pages. But then I started wondering what if someone actually tried to email me on that email address.
So.... you're the jackass who clogged up my mailbox with all this crap. Thanks alot, pal!
...also me@work.com.....
These days, I just use Mailinator. They offer throw-away email addresses for free and automatically delete any mail the account receives after a few hours. That way, I can actually confirm registrations and the like but don't have to worry about spam. And I do not bother innocent third parties, such as the nowhere.com domain owners.
fuckyou@youfuckingfuck.com. That's me.
If you ever asked for my email with less than honorable intentions and/or didn't actually need to know it, this is what you got.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
RFC 2606 reserves domain names like example.com, so you can safely use those without hitting existing email addresses.
I usually use "cowboyneal@slashdot.org". I mean, every question has to have a cowboyneal option, right?
Bureaucracy loves company.
...Is the one...
using another person as your dummy adress is pure EVIL. i was forced to abandon my main email adress because some moron used very extensivelly as a dummy address. and it was no coincidence, the address was too complex. before bayesian filtering, i had no other option than change my email and it is not an easy task if you have used for long time, you have printed ona various dead trees and so on
SHE does throw dice.
Yes I use both of those someone@somewhere.com and noone@nowhere.com.
Along with youdont@needto.no
I apologize to the ammount of spam I've caused those mailbxes.
*DrugCheese rants*
I usually use the email of an ex-boss that I hate.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
How many use anonymous@anonymous.com ? I've been using that since forever...I wonder if it actually exists...
Use a domain less than 3 chars - can't exist, according to standards, so you won't be abusing anyone. If that's not allowed, use example.com (or .org, or .net), which was set up as a dummy domain to be used in examples.
The best way I've found, though, is mailinator.com. Every @mailinator.com account "exists" (is created as needed), and other than (perhaps) root, abuse, etc., they aren't passworded. So you don't even have to set up a junk account, just make up the address on the fly. Be sure to delete any emails with passwords in 'em ASAP, of course.
I've always pitied the poor bugger who has bob@hotmail.com. ...
Several of my friends and I use that as our dummy
I own a domain that relates to a popular TV show -- many people use characters' email addresses when polluting registration databases (instead of using BugMeNot) and I get that email.
I also set up an AOL screenname "ignoreallemail@aol.com" and I use it when I'm polluting a database myself. I don't think that one can be killed. AOL dumps the inbox for me as it fills, but since I don't read any email there, I don't care.
name@company.com
It used to be the sample email addy on RealPlayer's activation form thing (circa 1999). After hand installing it on 200+ machines, it just stuck with me (stupid university didn't multicast-image their machines back then...we had to install everything manually..ugh)
How about bogus login passwords for one off registrations?
My favorite is
Login: asdf
Password: asdf
Let's you keep the right hand on the mouse!
I've always been user@domain.com.
It's probably been said, but the correct dummy address ends with invalid.com (variations like a.invalid.com or invalid.net supposedly work too). Domains ending with invalid.* don't exist.
Why spend time typing nonsense emails like someone@somewhere.com and noone@nowhere.com when you can just type 1@2.com?
example.com was reserved by the IETF so that dummy email addresses could be used in examples. See www.example.com/
jsmith@hotmail.com or sometimes jsmith123@hotmail.com
If people, like the submitter, were using it for site registrations, etc, and it becomes a spamtrap, then a lot of innocent sites will get flagged as spammers.
is a pretty common one here in england....
by and large (eg with the proviso that only non existent domains are used for this) I applaud such things as the best way to fight all these loons building ever larger and ever more interconnected databases of internet users and profiling and tracking and analysing them is by filling those databases with as much junk as possible...
I will commonly complete you-must-register-to-get-access forms with;
a nonsensical name, eg mickey_moose_99
a DOB circa 1900
the wrong sex
an unlikely city and country, such as Krasnyy, Iran
a 90210 area code
an 0898 696969 telephone number
It would be nice to hear from someone with access to a large database, eg online newspaper, what proportion of registration data is bogus.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
I use foo@bar.com very often. I didn't realize it until today that it could be a valid email address because bar.com seems like a reasonable e-store. Even if they don't have the email address, it would still have to be dealt by their mail server before it's discarded. Probably costs them bandwidth too.
That's "activism", the subject field's too short.
I use president@whitehouse.gov for everything.
I often use god@hotmail.com or god@msn.com for "registration" before downloads... (Realplayer for instance). Give that one a google search and have fun!
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
For web sites that require me to enter a email address I have found that all of them will allow root@localhost as an email address .
If that doesn't work, @.com
I always use
o urbusiness.com
fuck@you.com
eat@me.com
blow@me.com
noneof@y
No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
I always use me@inter.net
I will work to elevate you, just enough to bring you down
asdfasdf@asdfasdf.com
But for the past few years i've always used snow@white.com. After seeing this article, i googled for it and discovered only 67 results, and that white.com redirects to index.com. No harm , no foul I guess...
I often use nunya@biz.com. I'm actually having a power struggle at the tv guide site with people using the same address to login.
I used to use fuck@you.com or just @.com until I discovered mailinator.
bob@dole.net always is my pick, unless I run for presidency.
root@localhost.localdomain
It's amazing how many sites don't even check for correct e-mail form. My most often used dummy addresses are a@b.c or jimmycr@ck.corn . You would think that sites would at least check for a valid ending.
Hey, I know the guy who has the somewhere.com domain name. I'm sure he'd appreciate it if he didn't have to use 99% of his internet bandwidth throwing away mail send to bogus addresses...
what if there is actually 'someone' who owns someone@somewhere.com ? You know what? It just might be true.
.invalid suffix after the random email address you've picked.
No doubt about that, Sherlock. Some years ago I registered a similar generic domain name, miuku.net. This is basically the name of the @ character translated to Finnish. After a while spam started to pour in and when I googled for those miuku.net email addresses I found tons of usenet postings and web pages etc. Obviously some people don't want to give out their email addresses and use some "random" address instead. Hey people, if you don't want to give out your real email address, at least use the standard
I'm using a catch-all type email system for my domain, but whenever I spot someone using a fake miuku.net address I can easily redirect those emails to a special spam folder, so the domain name abuse doesn't matter that much. So far I have about 60 such redirects in place and over 58 thousand spam emails in that spam folder. I'm using those spam emails to teach my spam filter to better distinguish between spam and real emails.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
What p*sses me off is that I never get spam on my e-mail account that I use for on-line shopping, registrations etc.. but on my office address I get around 5 to 10 a day!
Anyway. my fav is 1@2.com. Nice and quick to type.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
I've been ussing bob@bob.bob and a@a.a to qutie some sucess for many years. Figuring the code that accepts the address is mearly looking for xxx@yyy.zzz
Ahh.. The mind what a wonderful trap!
who's been signing me up for all that spam. As soon as I kick Brian Henderson of 12 Maple Lane ass for spamming me with those empty beer bottle, I'm coming after you.
spambin@XXXX.org.uk where XXXX is my domain name, why not have a legit email which just takes spam :)
localhost is a decent idea, however if I am signing up for one of those infernal registered user form that are obviously there to harvent names, I usually go for sales@domain, where domain is the website I'm signing up for.
Sometimes sales@localhost is a choice, and if the site is checking for @ and . in the email address I go for sales@127.0.0.1
I use root@localhost . If that gets rejected I use root@localhost.com
The most miserable admin on the planet surely lives here.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
root@aol.com what else :)
One I have used for years. I am sure Mr. Irvin Tsnot at Real Networks is wondering why he gets so much junk Email...
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
You can actually retrieve stuff from that address later, if you need it. According to the site, "Jablome.com is a publicly accessible inbox for heywood@jablome.com.
"Use this email address any time you just need a quick, disposable place to send stuff. Get the info you want and never be bothered by the resulting torrent of spam and/or other weird stuff."
I dont get so creative unless I need to remember the addy for like, my NYT account. Usually, it's auygduya@sdueue.com.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
There is too much effort in all of these examples, instead use my method.
m
:) and it looks kinda cool too :)!
For example:
adsfjasopiuasdfasdnfposadf@asdfopiajsdfnewfl.co
Took about 2sec to write
I wonder if anyone has patented the idea of using dummy email addresses to avoid spam.
I usually use some form of this, but always with a bogus tld. Most forms don't check for a valid tld, so I don't have to worry about routing spam to some hapless clod's address that I picked out of thin air.
the no
The best I ever saw was somebody who set their domain's MX record to 127.0.0.1
i've always used 'fake@hotmail.com'
and it doesn't bounce.
I actually have a legit dummy account that I set up with my ISP for that. The guy at tech. support wouldn't let me have "fuckoffspammers" but did give me the UID "spamsucks". Has the advantage of being usable when a website wants to verify that it's a legit address before letting you register, without having to fill your real e-mail box. SpamAssassin is at 2 on that account, and catches about 2,500 spams a week, tho. :)
I check it with webmail when I'm expecting a confirmation e-mail, and otherwise end up dumping a few thousand messages from the inbox whenever I get around to it (usually each month. thankfully, the ISP tech. support is willing to delete the whole inbox upon request, so I just have to e-mail 'em and ask 'em to...)
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
The somewhere.com domain is registered by Speakeasy. I checked and found that there is currently no mailserver associated with somewhere.com, so in this case you lucked out and didn't hurt anyone with your misguided efforts. People using random email addresses are very much like people randoming shooting guns. The example.com, example.org, and example.net domains are safe to use for this purpose, see RFC 2606, Section 3.
I always use me@privacy.net, it'll send an automated response explaining that you don't want their spam/"newsletter"/whatever...
For more information see: http://privacy.net/email/
So you're the one giving my address out to everyone. You prick, my mailbox is always full because of you!
scott
Actually, I use fu@bar.com more, but still reply on the ol' Darth Vader address as well. Often when programs insist you fill in your details on installation they'll find they've got the Dark Lord himself as a user...
I've been using mojo@jojo.net for the better part of the last 10 years (mainly as a tribute to Mojo Nixon, mojo@nixon.gov was the other one I use a lot), and then I found out a few years ago that Mojo Jojo is the bad guy on the Powerpuff Girls! Very weird.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
or else you get aoeu, which is the row on a dvorak keyboard
If you are dumb enough to chose someone@somewhere.com as your email address, or noone@nowhere.com, you deserve the spam.
A previous poster mentioned it, and I fall in the same category. I use a@b.com.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
you@suck.com
now, I use an actual account on yahoo (see above) that I check once a week. I am already getting over 1000 virus-infected emails every day due to a rather popular Honda.co.uk advert that I had mirrored so I figure why worry about a couple more spams?
In Soviet Russia...michael would be rotting in Siberia!
1 - you are falsifying your identity with intent to deceive.
2 - you are assuming the identity of someone else, again with intent.
3 - improperly using others resources, or causing harm to others resources..
Doubt anyone would ever be tried and convicted under the law, but in this day and age, when people are jailed just for speaking, and the government will monitor what books you read, anything is possible..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about foo@bar.baz ?
so fuck you!
Fleur de Sel
Always a favorite!
ben.dover@upyours.com
i think a lot of those result hits are articles where someone was writing a tutorial involving an email address and they didn't want to post a real one...
;)
still, i like the me@privacy.net one
I wonder how much junk mail 1060 W Addison, Chicago, IL gets. I know I've contributed a bunch.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
is to use any LHS @example.com. This, by RFC, is guaranteed to belong to nobody.
I have always used: aolsux@aol.com
I have checked it myself, it never bounced back. I just hope it isn't a real guys addy. I hope it's aliased to the VP or something. =)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
I like putting little messages in.
y ouwhore.com.org.net.tw.uk.
So in RealPlayer, I have things like fuckoffandstopinvadingmyprivacyyousonofacock@fyad
Works a treat.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
that way using dummy email addresses.
;)
:)
Someone uses someone@somewhere.com and then someone else signs up for a month as someone at the somewhere.com mail server and has the ICQ password recovery email the password to someone@somewhere.com for an ICQ account saying that is their main email address. Other services could be cracked the same way.
I just use a Yahoo Webmail account, orion_blastar at yahoo.com and clean out my bulk mail folder every once in a while. I got 100M of storage and bulk folders do not count towards that storage. I also have a low ICQ number, that nobody has been able to crack yet.
People can reach me via my email or my web forum included in my Slashdot profile. Very few actually do.
I think I got like 6 fans on the whole Internet who like me, the rest either hate me, ignore me, or don't know who I am yet.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
example.com is set up for exactly thie purpose. See RFC 2606. .test .invalid .localhost are also mentioned in RFC 2606. .localhost may cause more fun when somone tries to mail spam to it.
As some servers check to see if you actually have a real address (ie by seeing if it bounces or not), I just use asd@aol.com as I am fairly confident that there is an AOL address with just about anything in front. It is also quick to type so if you want to register for something several times you can do
@ aol.com
asfweg@aol.com
eryh9g80erhg@aol.com
ergohrwng
goin@aol.com
etc.
second place aint bad, I'm sure I haven't posted it that many times by myself though.
You think there'd be more for bush@whitehouse.gov (465 - and mostly not email addresses)
Theres a few for dubya@whitehouse.gov though 1,640
Reminds me of an african friend who said he was going to "pay his respects" to Idi Amin - is this the internet equivalent, using the email of someone you don't like in all those net forms.
Anyway, if you want an invalid email, try playing with first level domains, i.e. yourname@mail.xx (no xx top level domain, i bet) or even second level domains where that is restricted i.e. in my country you can't have @yourdomain.uy, but must be yourdomain.com.uy, yourdomain.org.uy, etc, I think something similar happens in uk
thats what i use! sometimes abuse@whateverthesitemaybe.com
I've always been a big fan of none@none.com
short, simple.. lets me get on with my life.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I use me@here.com. Have for years.
no@no.no
Just cause I don't like spam.
"Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."
I've been using none@none.com for several years
Its pretty obvious really. Or sometimes I use the @real.com domain because they are a real nuisance when it comes to mailing lists if you are stupid enough to register their software
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
fake@email.com
Poor guy who owns that one
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
I always use name@company.com. Its suggested whenever i need to insert one, and i very rarely have it rejected by filters (twice in all my days of using it). Its great fun.
My favorite...
JimBob Jumpback 1313 Mockingbird Ln. Anywhere, CA 90210 jimbob@jumpback.com 555-123-4567 Please feel free to use this for yourself.
Most places, i just enter some variant of xxx@yyy.zzz. As long as you have an as (@) and a dot (.) they generally don't seem to care. Some will even take any garbage, as long as the field has a value.
I send it straight to the someone@microsoft.com just like the msn website says
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
"I usually use webmaster@ ..."
I prefer postmaster@[site]. Internet standards require postmaster be a working mailbox (not everyone follows the standards, but many/most do). I also find webmaster@[any-domain] tends to gets tons of dictionary-attack spam, thus making it more likely to be filtered already. Most (not all!) spammers filter out postmaster@[all-domains] (spammers may be stupid, but they're not *that* stupid). Finnally, postmaster@ is, I suspect, more likely to be read by people who care (sysadmins rather then marketing weenies).
"...and I check all of the "Email me adverts for all this shit!" boxes, too."
I never do that. I also check off whatever "opt-out" options the form offers. That way, they are encouraged to adhere to their own policies. If they do not spam unless you ask them to, then postmaster@ will not be spammed. If they send stuff without asking, then postmaster@ gets it.
Alas, more and more registration forms check for obvious things like a domain the organization already operates.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Some people munge their address like me@SPAMhotmail.com. All mail delivered on that domain is spam. check the stats.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Icant@tell.ya is usually the one I use... and noneofyour@business.com is another.
Although sometimes I will dig up the billing or administrative contact on the domain for the website that's asking for my email address and use that (gotta love whois), and that's usually if the site is being unusually annoying in it's demand for "required" form fields.
-- This sig for rent.
I always use bob@bob.bob Since bob isn't a real TLD, it really shouldn't matter. A few websites actually verify TLDs, so for those I change the .bob to .com. Ocasionally I'll get a message saying bob@bob.bob is all ready taken and then I realize I've registered for the site before, but I just forgot my password.
-SumDog
It goes right back at them, or maybe their braindead isp.
With the added benefit of sometimes triggering endless loops in old / poorly configured mail servers.
Getting all bounced mail for *@lies.org, I get see a few jems float through every once in a while.
Y'all have been pretty creative recently with variations of 'EveryoneKnowsBushTells@lies.org' for forum registrations.
That's way too much to type out. I usually use me@you.com...I know I can't be the only one that's lazy and doesn't feel like using a valid e-mail address.
http://www.somewhere.com/
___Abuse of power comes as no surprise___
1) Get an simple, non-personal e-mail adress ./ to try it out
2) Write a script to reply with a 'no-spammers!' email
3) Advise people on
4) Harvest e-mail adresses of slashdotters!
5) Sell e-mail adresses to spammers
6) Profit!!
fuck@you.comm ewhere@overtherainbow.net
fuck@off.com
nunya@bidness.net
so
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I always give out 20350 as my zip code to surveys and garbage like that. 20350 is the zip of the Pentagon, so hopefully there is a lot of marketing information on them now...
Sorry, but I have mailto:public@friend.com!
I tend to use Viv@x.com since they no longer exist and became PayPal. I was using this as a fake before they exisited anyway.
Viv
Gmail invites for ip
One of my domains seems to be commonly used for dummy addresses. I can see that people would connect "ham" with "spam" when trying to think up a dummy one :-) Anyway, there was one particularly interesting one that came through once, so I googled for it. I found not only where it had been entered on a web site posting, but also figured out who actually did it (including their real email address). So did I just forward all their junk mail to them (it gets a lot)? Of course not. Instead, it's being used as a spamtrap (after a few months of SMTP 550 errors).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
No complaints yet.
I always use that. Sounds cooler than .com too.
I wish more people used: Homer@Doh!.com
I own canblowme.com (I used to run a wildcard web site where you could type in like employer.canblowme.com and vent about your employer), and you wouldn't believe how much spam I get to you@canblowme.com, despite the address not even showing up anywhere on the web (according to Google... I guess it will when it indexes slashdot now).
It's all from disgruntled people filling out web forms, not bothing to even think whether you@canblowme.com is actually a real address.
I used to work for a company that hosted the domain customer.com. One time when their mail server had become extremely backed up, we found that Microsoft had sent some 40,000 identical mailings to customer@customer.com. Oops!
domain combinatorics
check out what asdf.com has to say about people using asdf@asdf.com.... actually the note on his page is a lot nicer then it used to be, they used to be really mad about it.
In the UK, 1 is only illegal when you use a false identity for fraudulent purposes. You are not doing 2 if you use an @example.com address - there is no person at that address to impersonate. And 3 doesn't apply if the organisation in question doesn't send you an email. If you don't request that they send an email, then they are using their resources on their own initiative and you aren't misusing anything.
What you are probably doing is violating a EULA, but their legal standing is very questionable, especially when you aren't actually paying for the service.
So, at least in the UK you aren't going to get busted for using a fake account if you do it right. Using support@microsoft.com is a different matter, you could probably claim it's stalking or something.
IANAL...
People using one of these fake addresses should also use a common password. That way, when other people try to use the fake address at a site where it's already been used, they can log in successfully. I propose a password the same as the username, e.g. foo@bar.com with pw=foo, or someone@somewhere.com with pw=someone.
by using this address, not only are they misled, they're at least bothering someone bigger than they are in the process.
*@amiga.nil
It is best to just sign up for a yahoo or hotmail account that you don't use.
n/t
The folks who own "null.com" or "nothing.com" have to deal with mountains of crap from STOOOPID people, like the person who posed this question on Ask /. (And, btw, the intelligence of the person who's been using "nowhere.com" is questionable.)
Please, FOLKS! If you need to enter an email address to make some form happy, and they don't require active registration (i.e., you answer the email), use a FAKE TLD!
I've been using FUCK@YOU.UPTHEASS for years! I doubt that .UPTHEASS will ever beome a valid .TLD. And most sites only look for a @ and a . That's how they can claim 5 Billion Registered users!
Best Buy can have you arrested
I think it's downright rude to fake your reply-to address in public forums, requiring your recipients to try to guess what your real address might be and I never answer to people who require me to remove this or that, do a ROT13 on their .sig and hop on one leg barking like a dog before replying.
The only time I use "fake" address is when I sign-up to things which seem to require e-mail address for no good reason; I have a /dev/null mailbox address set up for those sites.
My domain gets tons of spam, but my filters take away 99% of it, occasionally new innovative spam gets through before SpamAssassin/Razor/other RBL's catch up with it, but personally I don't really see it as a very big problem (don't get me wrong, spammers should die, I just don't want to add to the resource waste by faking my address).
If you're going to use a fake address, then use example.com (which is meant for this type of thing) or at least make sure your address is invalid so that SMTP servers reject it immediately instead of trying to deliver to existing domains.
This isn't exactly new thing, have a look at this Risks Digest post from 1997 (!): http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.04.html#subj9.2
Would be nice if at least we /.-ers who are trying to be on the bleeding edge of technology would try to solve these problems instead of being part and escalating them.
Why not just type iwnfoin@dsnos.com? or osifno@oisdnfoiwn.net? or iii@iii.com?
someone@somewhere.com VS none@none.com
4090 to 6660
Round 1 goes to None@None.com
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
That's my email address!
I usually use bob@bob.com Not sure why, but that's what I've used for as long as I can remember.
I always try asd@asd.com and it always appears that some other user has thought of it before me :)
As cunning as a fox, which has just been appointed professor of cunning at Oxford University. http://www.kinlan.co
Generally I agreem, I did get a reply from one person, who was abit anoyed with all the test email a script of mine was sending to him.
Since my own domain will forward any emails to my main account I usually use things like examplesite@mydomain.com if the spam gets too bad I can identify which site is a spam-pot.
However if I need to register a throw away account with some site that I know will send tonnes of spam, I will generally use one of their email address if they dont need verifying eg. to register on spam-pot.com (don't know if exists) I would use admin@spam-pot.com
For other sites I use what I call my porn account (otherwise known as hotmail).
in the long run, we're all dead anyway.
dev@null.com anybody?
of course, in situations where I'm preemptively annoyed that I'm being required to give my email address (such as to read a freakin magazine article online), I sometimes go the extra mile and opt for "piss.off@leave.me.alone", or worse.
I always used to use bob@bob.com, until I found a website where someone was already using it as there login name! I have to say, in general there is a large possibility of abuse of other people's email address. I have found a very large amount of newsgroups that all was required to sign up was to enter your email address. There has been more than one occasion that I was tempted to enter an enemies email address...
you don't want to know what sorts of ugly things arrive at my domains ... faked.org, faked.us, faked.de
Over the years I've gotten used to the junk email I get from autoresponders and verification notices. The amount of spam I receive used to be out of control, but since spam started escalating a few years ago I've made myself a spam expert.
The only solution really is to run my own server and keep up to date with all the latest anti-spam tech. Fortunately I haven't had to switch to a whitelist yet.
On the upside, I already know my email address is on every spammer's list in existance, so I can just freely post it just about anywhere knowing it won't make a difference.
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
Maybe an address at networksolutions.com or netsol.com would be more appropriate, after all they want to be the destination for traffic to nonexistent domain names with their sitefinder crap.
nslookup -q=mx somewhere.com ns1.macted.com
Server: mail.macted.com
Address: 136.248.127.102
Aliases: 102.127.248.136.in-addr.arpa
somewhere.com preference = 5, mail exchanger = mx0.somewhere.com
somewhere.com preference = 10, mail exchanger = mx.somewhere.com
somewhere.com preference = 15, mail exchanger = mx3.somewhere.com
somewhere.com nameserver = ns1.somewhere.com
somewhere.com nameserver = ns2.easyDNS.com
somewhere.com nameserver = remote1.easyDNS.com
somewhere.com nameserver = remote2.easyDNS.com
somewhere.com nameserver = remote3.easyDNS.com
somewhere.com nameserver = ns1.easyDNS.com
somewhere.com nameserver = ns1.macted.com
mx0.somewhere.com internet address = 63.249.27.248
mx.somewhere.com internet address = 63.249.27.230
mx3.somewhere.com internet address = 63.249.27.230
mx3.somewhere.com internet address = 63.249.27.248
ns1.somewhere.com internet address = 66.92.72.194
ns1.macted.com internet address = 136.248.127.102
no@no.no
I always use "daddypants@slashdot.org". Which seems to work.
/. is getting worse and worse?
Oh, by the way, has anyone noticed
It is as good as any dummy address :-))).
ods=> select count(*) from users;
:) (no email verification is performed by us)
count
--------
104046
(1 row)
ods=> select count(*) from users where lower(email)='someone@somewhere.com';
count
-------
0
(1 row)
ods=> select count(*) from users where lower(email)='noone@nowhere.com';
count
-------
0
(1 row)
We must either have very honest users or they're more creative with their bogus addresses
I've got my own domain, hosted on a server running cPanel. I initially created blackhole@mydomain.com, which cPanel lets me conviently 'forward' to :blackhole: (ie, the mail goes nowhere at all). Eventually, I realized some places (ie, AOL IM signup pages) limited how many times you could use the same address, so I created the whole subdomain of blackhole.mydomain.com.
:fail: or :blackhole: the mail.
All my friends know that mail sent there goes nowhere, so several of us use it for mail when we *know* it will serve no legitimate purpose.
I also have a catchall at my main domain (not blackhole.), so mail to any non-existant address works its way to me. This way I can give companies e-mails like amazon@mydomain.com; if they start getting spam, it's obvious where they're coming from, and then I just set up a 'redirect' again to either
For those really sick of e-mail nightmares, spending $6.49 a year, plus a few bucks for hosting, is definitely worth it.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Our company brochures tell people they can email anyone at our company using the first name, underscore, and last name. Pretty ordinary. Bad mistake: the sales folks wrote it up as "first_last@(our domain).com". Never trust a salesperson for *anything* the slightest bit technical.
We ended up having to add forwarding for all the mail we received at (you guessed it) "first_last@(our domain).com". Arrrrrgh.
I typically set up a real e-mail address on an e-mail server that automagically sends everything to /dev/null.
For example, if I had example.com, there would be a shredder@example.com address. And many of the people on that domain would know the address and could use it as they wished.
I've never bothered to look to see how much, if any, e-mail these accounts actually receive.
I always use webmaster@theirdomain.com
So someone who might do something about will see what kind of crap they send.
Free cell phone tracking
What kind of geek are you? A dummy e-mail address is not what you idiot whish to be a dummy address, a dummy address is one that
1) Has been declared as one in RFC 2606 (RFC? uhhh, never heart of this stuff, idiot?)
2) Is non-routable, because it has an invalid form.
3) An address using a domain which you own(!), but which you don't route, or which doesn't have an MX record (read up what an MX record is, idiot).
You have commited the eternal sin of using a domain name which you don't own. You might have made the life of some admin miserable by abusing his domain. You deserve everything bad comming out out your behaviour. I really hope someone now knows more of your sexual preferences, your bank details, your miserable social life and your passwords than you ever whished would be available in public.
Idiots like you are responsible for e-mail becomming unusable. Why do people like you touch things without having a clue about them? Please refrain from using e-mail in the future and lick a stamp. Or better yet, just lick your balls.
FOAD, GFY
or when I'm feeling malicious, generic dept name@company I hate.com
Another handy Mailinator or SpamGourmet type service is spam.la. <anything>@spam.la shows up on spam.la's front page. No brainer to use.
fsck -u
abuse@fbi.gov might be an intersting one.
usually I use noe@way.con
or sorry@2muchspam.com
Whenever I download a piece of software that would like to send lots of "incredible special offers direct to my email inbox" I always like to use webmaster@ and sign up for all the special offers I can get my hands on ;)
Wants my head on a stick. I used that for every damn junk e-mail on earth, untill i found that there actually was a bob.com. Sorry bob.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
nuf said
It's a domain that doesn't exist and any person with half a cerbrum would know it's fruitless to add it to their spam list.
What about nul@127.0.0.1?
is joe@aol.com
Poor fellow.
one of my email addys is a one char login @ 2 letter domain and a 2 letter extention and i do recieve a registration confirmations to various forums, free hosting etc... and if i feel like it, i go there and have some fun under someone's account =3
I was using noone@nowhere.com or something close to that for a while. Now I use something that requires less typing, like f@f.com
.com that is shorter, but I'm so used to typing it.
Sure, I can use something other than
#!/
i frequently use: none@mail.com
usually NOYB@yahoo.com (None Of Your Business).
And for the address, n/a makes a good street, and zip code 12345 is the General Electric main plant in Schenctady, NY (I actually could recieve mail there once upon a time, so that address is just out of date, not a lie.....)
I for one would like to thank you for adding to my problems... as owner of a few one word domain names (one along the lines of your somewhere.com example), I constantly get abused like this.
You don't want your spam so why do you assume I do?! It's gotten to the point that email is rendered useless (no way I could server it) on these domains.
Adding to the problem is all of those web sites people create accounts with refuse to follow accepted practices such as double opt-in email confirmation, and don't want to waste their time removing these bogus accounts at my request... so I keep getting bombarded day in and day out.
Thank you so very much!
If you feel the need to use a "fake" email address, at least take the time to think about the people you are hurting.
There are a number of things you could do to mitigate the damage...
1. Use a non-existant TLD such as example.foo.
2. Use a one-time disposable address (there are many services that offer this for free) in those situations where you need to receive an initial reply, but none after that.
3.Get yourself a junk Hotmail account or something.
4. Get your own damn domain and whore it out.
5. Use a non-existant TLD such as example.bar (twice for emphasis)!
Now if you will excuse me, I have to go and lame delegate the DNS MX records for yet another domain.
Regards.
Back in the days of yore, we had pole.org... so around christmas, we would get emails for santa@north.pole.org
We didn't advertise this.. it was just funny.
Another friend had shit.com
there was a ton of mail for eat@shit.com
As to whether or not this is open to "abuse"... hey. If you are going to put in a fake email address, it's absurd to blame someone else if that address exists, even if they registered nowhere.com just to intercept mail like this.
There is a somewhere.com with 4, count em, 4 MX addresses. I wonder how many million e-mails have been sent to somewhere.com? Would the return addresses be mostly spam or legit? Would the resulting database have any value? It might be interesting from a putely backscatter point of view. SG
root@127.0.0.1 is my personal favourite.
Incidentally, 'bogususer' is exactly that. I somehow manage to get about 1400 bounces per week on that address.
This sig no verb.
Are emails _meant_ to be abused. Create an email address that is created for the sole purpose of receiving spam (you might want to use another for registrations).
:0
Now, you could send everything to devnull, OR you could randomly select emails which you will "open", load the images and "click" on the link, going to the sites and visiting. Spammers will think these are active emails with people interested in their merchandise. They don't need to know it's a script.
Hmmm... we could call a project to do this devspam
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
If you would like to contact me about what I use, please email me @ asdf@asdf.com
When someone speaks of it being illegal it must be in the context of a country, since laws are different it may or may not be illegal in different areas.
2 19.shtml ) that speaks of a man being imprisioned for impersonation but the article did not say what the charges were.
There is an article here ( http://www.mensactivism.org/articles/04/07/09/226
Anyone know exactly what laws (For the United States or Canada) are involved?
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
This was set up some years ago specifically for this purpose and I have used it ever since. See their site here:
http://www.privacy.net/email/
This e-mail address (and some variations on it) is free for anyone to use.
+++++++
"Look, dear, it's a crazy hairy scary man!"
I can never resist.... Or is it, resistance is futile?
Joe@yo-mommas.house.com
WTF? Over?
I generally use info@website.com where the "website" is actually the website where I have to give this email address so they could sell it to spammers!
For the sites that require a valid email address, I use a webmail account.
hpotter@hogwarts.edu ... sorry, Harry Potter fan...
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I use Izzy Foreel for those first name last name deals.
Someone asked me the difference between ignorance and apathy, I told them I don't know and I don't care.
Not the high score, but second place in your list.
test@test.com
All go straight to my spam assassin auto-learn. On my homepage I have a link to "jsmith@etoyoc.com". John Smith doesn't exist on my system. He, and his home page, are just a honeypot for email spiders.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
A friend of mine owns a domain name that has certain geek value (it's a geek term for what happens when you delete data.) He has had it since 1995, long before spam was an issue. Sadly, in recent years, people have taken to using email addresses at his domain as fake addresses. He is the only person with a legitimate address at his domain, and he has all other addresses mail sent to a collection account.
His own address gets (before spam filtering,) 100-150 spams a day. The rest of his domain receives over 2000 spams a day. (With a legitimate message or two a week, for someone who either misspelled his real address, or tried to send to one of three other people (myself included,) who used to have addresses at his domain.)
He has even had individuals complain against him, because his admin@... account is disabled. (A spammer once faked messages coming from his domain, so he got complained against.)
So, PLEASE, only use an address that is a known-fake address. Either one at your own domain that you made up as a spam magnet (mine is 'spamme@<mydomain>') or when you have to submit an address for a website, try either cypherpunks@cypherpunks.com (password cypherpunks) or use something at the website's own domain. (Say, abuse@real.com when forced to enter something to download Real Player.)
(No, I am not going to announce my friend's domain. He gets enough spam as it is.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
And someday... I'll get that email address just for grins.
I have hypermail hooked up to the address ano.nymo.us. You can see all of the stuff that people sign up for (and spam they get because of it) here.
The one I've been using for the last ten years is 'anon@anon.net' -- it's quick, easy, and to the point.
I feel sorry for people who don't drink. When they wake up in the morning, that's the best they're going to feel all day.
For some reason about 10 years ago I started using the name Karl Marx, and the address karl@mit.edu for such purposes. If there is a karl@mit.edu, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the pain and suffering I have caused you.
P.S. You can start expecting large amounts of German ass-porn next week.
Heh. I actually registered that to put up a parody/protest about sitefinder. The domain turns out to get a lot of spam; some stuff from people who obviously just typed it into a form, but also however from people who had their mail systems configured to divert their spam/bad mail to nonexistentuser@nonexistentdomain.com (or some variant). All were happy to stop when asked, but if you must configure your mail like this, possibly better use an *impossible* domain (I did get a fair bit of private email bounced on to me by badly configured mail systems).
I often use none@nope.tld, where tld is some top-level domain.
DotAt@AtDot.DotCom.Com :)
a fellow computer science student in highschool showed it to me. It's just fun to say outloud
-Jason
If there's something dumb that requires my email address for no real reason, I like to sign up with webmaster@[domain asking for my email] or something similar. This way, maybe the webmaster will take the hint that no one wants their stupid email newsletter or to be contacted by third parties about special offers.
I try to be polite about it - if their "whore my email address out" boxes are unchecked by default, I might just use my generic "I-don't-care-if-you-spam-this" address, so as to reward those who design sites that are sensitive to privacy concerns.
That green slime had it coming.
I use root@127.0.0.1
or webmaster@127.0.0.1
Let them deal with their own garbage!
bob@bob.com
Poor Bob. So much spam, so much porn. Poor Bob.
I've used my REAL email address and had it denied as "already used"... bastards. An AIM search on my email address returns too many results.
notvery [at] cheerful [dot] com
(Not kidding, though I've moved on from that email address. I received 0 spam on in in the four years I've used it, and I've changed it subtly to avoid that changing without losing the message.)
I hate grammar Nazi's.
If the New York Times wants me e-mail to register, for example, I open their "Contact Us" page in a tab, I see they have an e-mail address executive-editor@nytimes.com and I use that. Let them spam themselves :) I do this with any site that wants my e-mail.
Years and years ago I was using 'test@test.com' as a dummy address when testing forms etc etc etc. Until the postmaster of test.com send me a pretty bitter email about the entire thing. It really made me realize 'Private data can go to these places. That is Bad.'
Since then I have stopped my development team from doing things like testing data migrations by simply changing the email addresses to dummy addresses so that account holders don't get test notifications (great, now random people on the internet would get them!)
The solution for me is to give each developer a mail subdomain that can be used for dummy and throw away addresses. Confidential email stays in and everyone is happy.
The nightmare scenarios with dummy addresses can really get out of hand, from testing 'email me my password' scripts to potentially revealing sensitive billing information.
No, dummy addresses are No Fun.
me@yourmommashouse.com
I use most of the times ple@se.not. Sometimes I use a special subdomain for it and use a unique address for the website (www.foo.com@nospam....), if I ain't 100% sure...
A popular one is not@aol.com.
Long live the Speaker Bracelet
Rolo D. Monkey
CAUCE is the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. A few years ago, when they just formed, they recommended using devnull@cauce.org as a "black hole" address that would not result in superfluous bounces. I've been using it ever since in USENET postings.
JP
The "somewhere.com" domain is owned by Kee Hinckley, and he has expressed many times to the ASRG that he gets more spam than anybody else on there for exactly this reason.
-John Fenley
I used to, a long time ago always put eat@joes.com a few years later, I found out that it _was_ a real address, and I ran into the owner of it. (Online of course)
Needless to say, we talked about the account and he said he would be interested in selling it for $500 or something like that. But, then he warned me of the unbelivable ammount of spam and garbage messages. (Keep in mind, this was also 7 years ago, when spam was much less)
I am happy I didn't buy it, becuase I could only imagine how many people give that out.
I am going to start using someone@somewhere.com when radio shack, and straus auto bust my balls about an email address. You can't say you don't have an email address, they want to sell you a computer. (radio shack, of course, not a car place) You don't want to give it out because of the spam. But also, if you decline to give it to them, they hold you up in line for 15 mins saying "they need it to get into the computer".
until (succeed) try { again(); }
If you own a domain, do a catch-all email for you domain. If you are registering for www.abc.com, use abc@your-domain.com , if you are registering for slashdot.org, use slashdot@your-domain.com. Hence, you can trace who are the spammer. Hence, you can trace the real spammer from the email address. And you can just divert any your unwanted email account to a "blackhole" (non-existance or auto-clean up mail account)
a@b.com
sales@real.com :D
info@localhost
http://siokaos.org/
I usually use i.dont@think.so. It's fool-proof until I realize that they just sent a confirmation record.
I get this feeling like I'm coming back groveling, "Please baby baby baby baby baby pleeeeease...."
Usually, when I don't want to be contacted about something, but am forced to give out an e-mail address before proceeding I enter something like
.com or something.
:) And finally I dont think there's a sdfkjsd top level domain.
:-)
sfkjdslkf@dsklfja.sdfkjsd
If they verify the e-mail address to make sure it's properly formatted then i just change the last part to
My guess is this way the dummy address is very likely to not exist as it is because it is to a point non-standard and somewhat unlikely for someone to use. Not to mention the domain is probably fake as well
When people see me doing this...they always ask "is that your e-mail address?" At which point I explain my privacy concerns and why I use junk dummy e-mail addresses
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Just looked it up - Scriptology site ? ?
It's RFC 2606: Reserved Top Level DNS Names
dev@null.com
yeah, my old favorite is none@not.a.net
anon@napster.com has been my nom de nada ever since i first downloaded napster and fudged that login info.
i used to have the actual e-mail address someguy@sprintmail.com in about 1996 and by 98 the account was unusable due to all the spam from people using that address as bogus info. it really sucked.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
I use myob@myob.com (Mind Your Own Business) or reallyfakename@reallyfakemail.com other similar ones...thanks for the tips regarding me@privacy.net and the other like services....
Just to save things from even being routed out, and likewise solving the problem of tapping a real address or domain I try to use fvckyou@offendingdomain.com when offendingdomain.com unnecessarily requires private info. And of course, when all else fails pick yuor favorite company to hate.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I almost always use "foo@bar.com" I do know that bar.com exists, but there doesn't seem to be a foo there.
Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working. -Anon
e d w a r d @ h o t m a i l . c o m I know I'm an asshole for doing so. But he took my name!
I, and I'm sure many other people have been doing this kind of thing for years and years. What would be interesting though is to gather a group of about 10 or so generic fake email addresses that have been a staple of this behavior for many years, such as someone@somewhere.com, noone@nowhere.com, no@one.com, etc, and then have a googlefight tournament between all of them..... figure out which fake email address has become King over all these years.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
On the POP server we were able to set up aliases.
Bing, one day I set up a default_user alias for myself and the next day my mailbox was full of about a hundred messages. I looked at a few making sure not to remember the peoples names ;)
I let the alias slide after it was just too many emails. Maybe someone else has it now. Maybe it's gotten claimed by the cumputing services.
a@b.com seems to work for me
mo@lester.net
For years, I used to use jeff@hotmail.com. I don't know who that guy is, but he probably really, really hates me now.
Now, whenever I have to supply an e-mail address, I use abuse@(theirdomain).com. Registering Real Player, I use abuse@real.com. I think: I checked the box that said I didn't want any e-mails... therefore, if they send one, I want it reported. I smile every time I get a chance to do it.
i always use bob@bob.com and occasionally fuck@you.com if i particularly don't like the bastids.
beer@work.com
I tend to use the email anon@anon.com.
...
nick
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
FuckYou@Asshole.com is the address I use for folks that require one where it doesn't need to be verified.
For verification sites, I use my Hotmail address where only the messages from sites I have selected come through. If you aren't on my allow list then it goes bye-bye.
Now, for compulsory sites like NY Times that requre me to sign up, that requre a username and password to access the news, that verify your information when you do sign up - I use www.BugMeNot.com.
This site gives you valid unames/passwords so you can read online newspapers without having to disclose everything about yourself.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I like to use president@whitehouse.gov, but that address is usually registered already.
I always like to use "webmaster@domain.com" where domain.com is whichever website I'm out. While sure, it may not be the webmaster's fault that his company asks for email information when it's not necessary, but I feel it's appropriate to spam them rather than some poor smuck that's not involved at all. I like to see it as turning the tables on them.
ih8@spam.com
bogus@email.com
hello@goodbye.com
those are dummy emails i usually use
When you run NCSA Telnet on the Mac it's default telnet address is "nowhere.loopback.edu" which is a dummy address. I'll frequently use this as a fake domain--using an .edu fake domain is less likely to run into an actual site. (Loopback University?) I like all these other suggestions, though!
sales@[theirdomain] or
info@[theirdomain]
After all, they say they're not going to send me unsolicited emails and promise not to sell/share 'my' email address to other companies, so my strategy shouldn't be a problem.
I always thought that since the Sales/Marketing group for [theirdomain] drives people to send me unsolicited mail that it's only fair to provide their email.
Simple -- send all their junk mail back to them. I usually use webmaster@current_web_site.com.
Why do you think, that test.de does not have an MX entry
dig mx test.de fails
I bet that they must have gotten thousands of mails everyday from thousands of postmasters testing their new mailserver setup, programmers of cgi scripts testing their shop-orders from "Test" Accounts... and of course spammers....
Lord "not Gargamel's Cat!" Azrael
Be a good netizen and tag your invalid or made-up addresses with the pseudo-tld .invalid! It has been reserved for this purpose and will never contain any real domain names. It allows people and programs quickly decide that the address should not be used for mailing.
.invalid, you create frustrations in the poor souls who try to send you legitimate mail only to find that they bounce (or worse still, reach the wrong person). If you do not want to receive mail, be up-front about it, and use .invalid.
.example or example.com. They work, sure. However, they are meant to be used for actual examples, not as invalid domain names for avoiding receiving mails.
If you leave out the
Some people in this discussion have suggested the use of
1 - Nope, you will be retrieving your email at the address you specify.
2 - Whatever email address you give at Mailinator is yours for a few hours.
3 - Nope again, Mailinator encourages you to use their services and resources.
I do see your point, but using a service like Mailinator is technically no different than using a free email service.
-Pat
I ALWAYS use loser@aol.com ;)
I know where that email goes..
I remember when downloading netscape from their site it required an email address. As I was not willing to give them something real to spam, and I assumed the whole 'email registration' dumb for something you can download for free by just using their annonymous ftp server, I decided to express this in the email address for registration.
So i chose 'idiots@aol.com', only to learn:
'too many registrations on that email address already'.....
I've always used user@host.com but lately it seems validators are disallowing this option.
I always use x@x.com, but have found that it's frequently used as well.
when I had my own webpage three years back. I used a free web based counter from company [X]. The counter worked great, but the company wouls spam me everyday, no matter how many times I changed my prefrences to no email. Finally, I got so frustrated that whenever I was filling out any form online I would use webmaster@[X].com (as this was the email on company [X]'s website.) Three months later the company folded, and can only think that I played some small part. Haha! Albeit I lost my free counter, at least their webmaster had to have felt his own spam fury.
On a slightly related note my grocery savings (tracking) card is under John Q. President. So when they annoyingly thank me by name they have to say Thank you Mr. President. It was Mr. Niezbadanego but I got sick os standing there while they puzzled over it.
Somewhere.com is a domain that was registered by a friend of mine long long ago back before spam and web sites and all that crap ruined the beauty that was the Old Internet. (I'm being ironic here, by the way). I think he registered it because he thought it was kind of funny, but unfortunately he pointed it at his mail server.
:'}
It turns out that as the internet became more and more popular, more and more people started using someone@somewhere.com as the address they'd put into email when they didn't want the originator of the email to be known. For example, forwarded mail where you don't want the person who forwarded it to get mad at you for publishing their email address.
So he started getting a lot of crank email to somewhere.com - people complaining that he shouldn't send them mail about Jesus' third coming in a UFO, and stuff like that. For a while he tried sending mail to these people to clue them in, but of course they were un-cluable.
Eventially, it got to the point where he was mostly getting the kind of stuff you get when you've been joe-jobbed - angry replies to actual spam of the kind to which we've sadly become accustomed. It was then that he started analyzing the responses, and I'm pretty sure this is what inspired his anti-spam work.
Messagefire, the anti-spam service he started, really rocks. It's too bad that they've stopped accepting new customers. Sigh. Because I know him, I got in on the ground floor, and am still using it to filter my spam. It's wildly successful, and I'm very grateful to him for setting it up. I hope at some point they start selling service again.
lame@lame.org -- i'm sorry lame.org owner!
How about
you@yourcompany.com
I bet the folks over at Melbourne IT, LTD who own the address love it.
anyemail@spam.la shows up on www.spam.la and its public, so it is interesting to read as well :)
The interesting thing about that address is that it is so widely used that whenever you need to to provide and email address (and no password) to access some "available to registered users" information (like software/driver downloads), you can just enter that address to get past the login page.
(Hell, two mod points left and I'm answering on every thread.......)
GPG 0x1B479C78
I use this one when I don't want them to reach me Othwewise I'm using trashXXX@mywebsite where XXX usually keeps website's name. I assign high spamassassin score to all emails which start with XXX and they go to caught spam. I never did analysis though on which email address have got most spam
anon@<insert name of butt-munch that wants my email address here>.com
So if I have to register to see content at cnn.com it would be anon@cnn.com
I also do this for software activation and product registrations.
My friends are always amazed at how little spam I get. I wonder why?
"Waitress I need two more boat-drinks..."
IANA Reserved domains are the only ones that should be used for that stuff.
;)
IANA Whois Service
Domain: example.net
Name: IANA_RESERVED
Registrant:
Name: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Organization: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Address1: 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330
They work fine. No one apparently is familiar with the RFCs for the minimal email sanity testing that is required
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
goto@hell.com
or
spam2@hell.com
-Mike
Incidentally, my real email goes to my own domain, where my primary account is a catchall. I make it a habit of using a different non-existent account for each legitimate but potentially suspect address request (usually [requester's name]@mydomain.com) so I can keep track of who's illicitly sharing my info.
Not really, if anything, I use throwaways on my own domain, that I can use as spamtraps.
Anyway, if there is identifyable information about you there along with the e-mail address, it could have funny privacy implications... For example someone you knew comes around and sends you an e-mail with something that should have been only between the two of you, and it suddenly ends up in some random person's mailbox... Whoops.... :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I used mo@mo.com for the longest time until he managed to track me down by IP address. It was a test address for my development needs as well as web site registration. The email was my "John Doe" address and I never expected it to be an actual email account.
On the day he found me, he called the dot-com where I was working and they sent out a page: "Is anyone using mo@mo.com as an email address? I have an angry person on the line". I spoke with him briefly and received an earful. He had received countless email at his address including test messages and notification messages from our application. It was an experience.
Mo, if you're out there, I'm sorry!
You can use anything@example.com and noone will have trouble with a full inbox.
3. Reserved Example Second Level Domain Names The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) also currently has the following second level domain names reserved which can be used as examples.
example.com
example.net
example.org
or I'll use gwb@whitehouse.gov or Tony.B-Liar@10downingstreet.gov.uk
On sites that have a legit need for my email address like Amazon, ebay, Newegg and others I buy stuff from I use Sendmail's plus notation (also known as the user+detail format) OR an alias on one of my personal domains. I use aliases quite a bit. That way I can remove the alias and shut off the potential (or actual) flow of spam to that address. It's easier to remove an alias than it is to have Procmail filter out mail to a given plus notation address. It always amazes me who gets my alias or plus notation email address over time. For example I may notice that I'm getting penis enlargment or mortgage spam from "networkcomputing@mydomain.com." Hmm... I wonder who sold the spammer that address... Hmm....
When filling in First name Last name fields I always use Marion Morrison. Before you Google for that name try to guess who's it is (ok, a hint, was).
I also understand that it's very common to use pres@whitehouse.gov, or so I hear. Another favorite is darl@sco.com
So I was registering realplayer, but they wanted an email address - I tried loads of things like go@away.com, fuck@you.net, realplayer@sucks.com, i.hate.realplayer@hate.com, and it took about 30 attempts to find a free address...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
blowme@gunpoint.com
If You see this in your registration info... um... it was someone else. I'd never lie.
Hey!!! the parentheses are good for something
Piece of cake
...is root@127.0.0.1 (or some variation therein). Alternatively, you can lookup email addresses for the site that demands an email address and use that ...
When we were moved from @home, which was extremely crowded, to @attbi, which was lightly loaded, I picked up a bunch of email names for me and my kids:
o m
owen@attbi.com
laurel@attbi.com
hazen@attbi.c
That turned out to be a big mistake. It turns out that you have exactly this problem of other people putting your email address into the various forms. I still get noticable amounts of spam out of these addresses... *sigh* So when we went to @comcast, I left the first names behind. I'm just looking forward to the end of 2004 when they stop forwarding the attbi email addresses.
Owen
i use user@localhost.com or admin@localhost.com
eg$ host mouse-potato.com
mouse-potato.com has address 127.0.0.1
I'm sure that someone at The Grill Store and More really appreciates me.
me@here.com
foo@bar.com
me@home.com
someone@somewhere.com
sex@sex.com - 33,700 (Google)
smith@smith.net has always served me well.
Bark less. Wag more.
I just always fill in either root@[domain] or webmaster@[domain] of whatever site I'm signing up for (RealPlayer, etc).
The Kingdom of Retarsia
I've often been aware of the fact that some poor person might end up receiving tons of junk for using a potentially valid e-mail address.
So instead, I just use the domain name for the site that I'm signing up with. For example, if I'm visiting www.a.com and they need an address, I'll use nobody@a.com.
Of course, if I need to get an e-mail from the site I use a disposable email address from one of the various free services on the net.
For companies that force you to submit your email address, just use "nobody@domain.com", substituting the company's actual domain address for the "domain.com" part.
/etc/aliases that points "nobody" to /dev/null. /dev/null locally.
Or try "nobody@localhost" (if the stupid JavaScript or CGI validity checking code will let you).
E.g. nobody@real.com, nobody@macromedia.com, etc.
Otherwise you're just WASTING email bandwith for everyone!
WHY?
1) Most places use sendmail as their MTA.
2) Sendmail is usually setup with a default entry in
3) Since the outgoing email will usually originate from their servers, the email will just go back to them and keep the network traffic local instead of wasting time and bits hopping through whatever various Internet mail relays to get to an outside address.
4) Chances are the neighborhood-friendly overworked sysadmin for domain.com (or whatever company) is just being specifically told by his M.B.A. PHB to send the spam email out or he'll get fired (the sysadmin, not the PHB). This way, everyone is happy. Using the mail logs, the sysadmin can prove to the PHB the spam email was successfully sent out as requested but in actuality, it just winded going to
Yes, I know some PHBs hire outside professional spammer companies to do their dirty work. For this case, it'll just send the email back to PHB's company, so both the PHB and the professional spammer company are just hurting themselves without hurting everyone else.
The whole point is not to spam other people but to make it unprofitable for both the professional spammer companies AND their customers to keep doing this by wasting their own resources each time.
...is google@yahoo.com, just because i think it sounds ridiculous.
This talk of email abuse reminds me of the spam filtering system of a person i go to school with:
you send him mail. If not on his "Acceptable Mail" list your are directed, via an auto response to his webpage, whereupon, you submit your email address for his approval.
The problem exists when 2 people employ this method, as if your auto-response's email address is not in the original sender's acceptable mail list, an endless (or quickly auto-abandonded) chain of emails back and forth betwixt auto-reponders is created.
I thought this was a bit silly.
Waive That elaborate nonsense. This works wonders for me
--Cheers
sigSEGV - doy!
I used to always use bob@bob.com, until I learned that my wife's friend owned roo.com and frequently gets mail to kanga@roo.com. It made me stop and hunt around for an address that wouldn't harm an innocent. I finally found it: anything@mouse-potato.com
If you do an nslookup or dig, you'll find that the MX server for mouse-potato is listed as 127.0.0.1, so I've been trying to get it onto as many spammer's lists as I can...
I always use "privacy@devnull.com".
Michael.
Linux : Mac
Oh shit, I just ID'd myself to the spambots! D'oh!
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Since the first time I was ever forced to put in an email to download software (since at least some generous souls will let you just, oh... USE IT) I've used whatever I could find on real.com's webpage as an email address.
Over the years, I've probably sent them hundreds of spam emails, and I'm proud of it.
-- (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I send all my spam and bs to AOL
john@aol.com is my imaginary account
Google turns up 6520 results.
Gamblers Forum
I own a short domain name (3 characters long) that is aparantly often hit by people who type in some :)
random characters for their email address when they sign up somewhere.
(like sdf@asddf.com, and no, this is not my domain
As a result I get all kinds of spam, newsletters, sign-up welcome messages etc.
I used to bounce all the mails, but that didn't work too good with my secondary MX. (For some reason about 25% of the mail comes in over the secondary MX...)
Right now I just pipe the messages through a statistics script:
Currently I receive one message every 16 seconds on average, resulting in about 130,000 emails a month, causing about 400MB of traffic.
I used to have road runner. through Time Warner.
After moving to an area outside of Time Warners boundaries I was shocked to find out that I could not keep email address I had used for 8 years without continuing to pay the full $45 a month for Road Runner services I would not be able to use. (there is no way to just keep and pay for an email address).
Even worse... As soon as the account is cancelled. Your road runner email address is IMMEDIATELY thrown back in the pool of addresses up for grabs...
If like me you had used this email for your online banking, slashdot account emails, ebay accounts, etc, etc... you'd end up royally screwed when someone got your newly freed up email address and started recieving YOUR BANK STATEMENTS in their email... I just got an email congratulating me on my 1 year anniversary with E-Bay... had my account been given to someone else... all they'd need to do is go to ebay enter my email address and say "Forgot Password." Then bammo... Now they have my ebay login and MY SAVED CREDIT CARD Info...
I called Time Warner and complained. They insisted this had not been a problem at all in the past. And that I could either continue to pay them $45 a month. Or just suck it up and deal with it.
I picked option C. I found a friend with road runner and moved my address over as a sub on their account. Then promptly set up my own domain and mail server and began the months long process of re pointing all my major correspondence over to that email address as I knew it wasn't going anywhere.
From what I can see the potential for identity theft is huge!!!! And to think (As Time Warner does) along the lines of "Well sir do you really think someone else is going to add a subaccount with the email address of bob@..."
Is rediculous. Time Warner is not alone in this however... The recycling of email addresses plagues nearly every ISP in existence today.
If you want to keep it private. Don't have it sent to an email address that you can't ultimately control the fate of. I don't know about the other ISPs but Time Warner has shown it could care less who gets your old email address not to mention what they'll do with it.
nunya@freaking.biz
It short,sweet, and if someone ever looks at it gets the point across.
SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0
0 rows returned
Notice that disclaimer in my original post...
I realize its not illegal just to use an alias, as it still is technically 'you', but if you intend to deceive by using a false name that doesn't represent you, then I believe the legal issues would come in to play.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I just use henkslaaf@hotmail.com. It is a real hotmail account and I see pizza orders fly by weekly, because other people use it too. Its funny, because the name is a funny one and I've used it once or twice IRL. If you're Dutch you know y it's a funny name. I sometimes write down just a random address and phonenumber. Those ppl must be agitated... lol.
Just use postmaster@{the site name that wants to abuse your email address}
No worries about screwing up someone's address, the spammer gets what they deserve, and that's that.
suck@my.dick
if they check for correct tlds, its
suck@my.dick.com, though the 1st one is the better one, imho
I use me@them.com
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!
Where Do Dummy Email Addresses Go?
Tumbolia, of course!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
I always use
kissmy@ss.com
: )
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
Well the obvious choice would be null@127.0.0.1 since any (semi-intelligent) human can tell it's false, but half-baked web pages can't. I used to use null@aol.com sometimes until I realized that some poor schmoe might be getting spammed at aol. It's not very nice to use an address that might exist...
root@192.168.1.1 ? I wonder what that would do...
...usually, by the time I realise that I can't get past some stupid webpage *without* entering an email address, I'm frustrated enough that the venting feels nice.
Recently, though, I've noticed a lot of commercial website forms bouncing that submittal by replying that I have to enter a *real* email address. Do they just scan for fuckyou*@*.* with the presumption that all such addresses are spoofed?
Assuming the web site at wherever.com wants my email address (and also assuming I don't need to hear from them) I just use abuse@wherever.com. That way all the spam they generate goes to the right place!
my favorite dummy address has always been root@127.0.0.1
Our server, myserver.com, was used in the manual of a bulk mailer software program. So, users new to the world of spamming where using smtp.myserver.com as their smtp server. At the time, our server was an open rely (things were friendlier on the net those days). Imagine the problems we had. We hired a lawyer in the country of the bulk mailer developer and ended up settling out of court.
I use junk@junk.com...
Why its:
foo@bar.com
of course.
On those rare occasions when you really do want to use your real email address in a form, you can use address extensions to find out if your address was sold to a spammer.
Most servers support address extensions. For instance, on Postfix, the default recipient_delimiter character is the '+' sign. So if your address is user@example.com, you could send yourself an email at the extended address user+blahblah@example.com, and you would receive it in the same mailbox.
How is this useful? Well say you sign up for the New York Times. When you fill out the form, enter user+newyorktimes@example.com . Now if you ever receive a spam and it is addressed to that address, you know the New York Times sold your addy.
Address extensions is a feature that allowed email addy's to be split up to multiple people. It's a rarely used feature these days, so it might be disabled on your server, ymmv. It doesn't work with either Yahoo or Hotmail.
And that is exactly why address munging is considered harmful.
Help us build a better map!
I am Someone you insensitive clod!
Open Source Sushi
But then again there are people like me who run a site that collects emails from people who would like to download my software ... and so many times I get those wonderful bounce messages saying that an email does not exist, or the mailbox is full or whatever ... I always wonder about this because the registration page states that the user will be sent the download password via email ... typically there are about 200 bounces a day, are there that many people that are clueless and privacy paranoid out there?
... I get spam ... I use Thunderbird and don't have to deal with alot of it ... yes I worry about the bandwidth that is taken up by all this ... yes I would love some way to deal with it ... but anyone can find me walking the streets of my town, or they can dial me up on the phone by perusing the white pages ... what is the difference if they can send me an email? privacy is just an illusion we use to convince ourselves we have space on this overcrowded, tightly connected world we call Earth ... we are not alone and can never claim to be an island anywhere but in our own minds ...
My email address is posted on my personal website
I have forever used only one dummy address, and I forever shall: spam@spam.org :-D
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
You missed the obvious:
com@com.com - 20,200
(And I don't count the sibling post saying "@example.com" wins.. that's not an email address, it's a domain.. google doesn't even use the @...)
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
I always use my real email address. Its bg@ms.com
I don't know if actually using 'postmaster' as my e-mail address cuts down on spam for me, because I get quite a bit of it anyway.
Also, I have an address of spamiam on this domain which I use for mailers where I don't care about the mail they might send.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
..you're saying I can email myself to determine if I'm a dummy?
I guess I should read the article..
(cackles)
...is that some sites (such as heise.de) have already started blocking *@mailinator.com addresses.
This trend will surely spread once more sites become aware of the "on-the-fly" nature of Mailinator e-mail accounts.
fuckyou@marketingwhore.com
dont@sendmemail.com
Never thought to check-it until today, now I feel a little guilty - it's a graphic design company. How they chose that name though, I can't be sure.
I use this. Kills two birds with one stone.
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
the former being one i've used ... the latter being one i actually had for sometime in 1995-1997 .. you wouldn't believe the "thank you for your interest in our product..." emails i got.
if you want people to think you know what you are talking about, just put ".com" at the end of everything you say.com
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This should keep the riff-raff at bay.
--- "1.21 Jigawatts!" -Doc
scott.richter@optinrealbig.com (my personal favorite)a a.com. com
jack.valenti@mpaa.com
hilary.rosen@ri
darl.mcbride@sco.com
bill.gates@microsoft
For whatever reason, I think dating back to my bbs days, I have used elite@slip.net. Back then it was more common for anonymous ftp servers requiring an email address but since the advent of the internet it has been used for just about everything from public forums to quick-and-dirty registration (ala NYTimes). One trick I have learned regarding registration requiring an email response is that I can use my valid email address to initially setup and respond to the automated email verification and, once verified, log into my account and replace the valid email address with my fake one. I think I chose slip.net because I got my first email address right around the time I first started to use linux and back then ppp/slip was a massive pain in the ass
No, you are wrong. There is no law against just "intent to deceive". There are laws against fraud, but to commit fraud you have to deceive someone as well as cheat him out of some money. If you are just lying for the purpose of avoiding spam, then it is entirely legal.
Check out spamdam. It does that but forwards them your main account so you can disable addresses that are no longer useful. It has a nice web interface for managing aliases. I use it all the time and it's great. [/plug]
yourmom@myhouse.com
Oddly enough, at one point in time it was actually one of my real email addresses. (I registered god.net and death.org back a few months before the Internic started charging for domain registrations) I used that email address specifically to see how many people actually sent random email to that address...
:)
Of course this was back before spam was a problem. A much simpler time... *sniff* memories
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
A few years back I was going through the obligatory registration process for real player, and inserted my name as "spamyourself@real.com". Turns out that was a popular option... it was already taken.
retlaw@disney.com was also a popular one for a while, as that was rumored to go to Michael Eisner, with their corporate headquarters, 500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521, being the target of any mailings.
There is also SCO, 355 South 520 West Suite 100 Lindon, Utah 84042 USA, Phone: 801-765-4999, Fax: 801-852-9088 Sales:1-800-726-8649. They don't post many e-mail addresses on their site, so jobs@sco.com will have to do. If anyone remembers Darl McBride's address, phone number, or e-mail address (does he even know how to use a computer?), please repost them. The poor kid who answers jobs@sco.com probably doesn't deserve the vitrol, but BigKahuna@sco.com does.
There are other great targets... Ashcroft, Bush's ranch in Crawford, the RIAA, etc. If anyone has addresses for these, please post them as well.
Spam should be a political statement.
The ______ Agenda
Seen it. Used it. Wondered how many spammers got bitten by it.
certanly, the people who run asdf.com were in for a little bit of a dissapointment.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've used dodgeit for a number of online newspaper registrations and such. The two problems I run into are that many of them don't let more than one person use a given address (e.g. nytimes@dodgeit.com is taken already), and many newspapers use realcities.com to handle their registration, so it's easiest to use a consistent address for them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My apologies go out to whomever actually owns blah@blah.com, I didn't think anyone would use that...
I often use no@thanks.com
--Paul
Unixpunx
figure it out
By the way, "$" is a legal username, so $@cc could work. Lot of naive valid-address checkers reject x@cc, and more of them reject $@cc.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I use various names ending in "-replies" at "downside.com" for everything. The address I use on Slashdot, "slashdot-replies", is harvested frequently. Just got one from OptInRealBig, clearly establishing that they use harvested E-mail addresses. "Opt-in", right.
Yes, having a domain is a good thing. I generally enter something from the home keys: oeuhsnh@oshhse.com or something similar, but once and awhile when registration is needed, I point it to [site/company name]-spam@[mydomain]; my e-mail server filters anything with *spam* to the spam folder and I allow spam (of all kinds) to reside a day on the server before being deleted so I'll be able to access this information there.
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
So you register a domain you should know is likely to get spammed, and then you complain when it is?
Fun game. How about posting some messages in a bunch of newsgroup, use your real address. Then you can complain even more!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Substitute the details for [boss_who_fired_me]@[my_first_job].com
Petty? Moi? _Never!_
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
dont@emailme.com
/dev/null.
However, I have a qmail default set up so that I can use email addresses like this:
user-[website]@mydomain.com
For example, I can use user-dell@mydomain.com whenever I'm on the Dell site and I still get the legitimate emails. If I start getting spam, I know immediately who shared/sold my address with a third party and I can start sending emails that arrive for the compromised address to
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
I use a Hotmail account for this sort of thing.
[ note to spambots trolling this article for emails: we have conveniently listed here for your perusal a number of otherwise legitimate-seeming spamtrap email addresses. what an intelligent spammer (sic) might choose to do with these is to remove all instances of the aforementioned spamtrap or "dummy" addresses from one's database, thus increasing the quality of said database. ]
i, for one, used foo@bar.com for a long time, but i began getting rejected, as that email had already been used to register, etc.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
2 - If you use an address that belongs to a real person, it's rude, and you should be careful not to do that. It's extremely rude if you're actually impersonating them (e.g. sending letters to the editor of a newspaper) or signing them up at some spammer site, but it's generally rude anyway. However, president@whitehouse.gov and billgates@microsoft.com aren't real people's addresses.
3 - This is the more interesting case (but you still shouldn't do it):
- If you use a reserved domain like example.com, that's proper.
- If you use a non-existent top-level domain, you're potentially causing a DNS hit to the root DNS servers, though usually ISP DNS servers will reject it.
- If you use a non-existent second-level domain in an existing TLD, you'll hit the DNS servers for that TLD (e.g. com or de), which are heavily loaded, mostly with bogus requests, and you really shouldn't do that on purpose.
- If you use a domain name that resolves to 127.0.0.1, you've added a bit of load to their DNS server, but they're having a good time so it's no problem, and the traffic won't go anywhere that bothers anybody.
- If you use a nonexisting username on an existing domain, their message will hit the SMTP server, which will waste a bit of its time and bandwidth rejecting it (unless the server is misconfigured or an MX forwarder, in which case it'll waste more time with a bouncegram later.)
- If you use a real person's name on a real domain, they'll get mail, and if you use a service-address name like postmaster@, they'll also get mail.
- If you use an email address on a honeypot server, you're giving it grist for the mill and good for you.
- If you use an email address on a known spammer's server, like optinrealbig.com, and the person you gave the address to is a spammer, good for you. But if the person you gave the address to _isn't_ a spammer, you're encouraging them to send mail to someone who'll abuse them.
The really annoying cases are when the person you gave the address to is a spammer who does dictionary-attacks. One of my customers had their own mail server, but used us for MX service, and spammers have started spamming MX addresses rather than direct addresses because MX servers usually don't have spam filters - so when some miscreant dictionary-attacked them, our server started to forward N million spams, mixed in with a small number of messages from their real customers (some of whom used our mail servers for their outgoing email, and some of whom used the MX when their direct SMTP server fell over and died trying to process the dictionary attack.) Ugly stuff.Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
have actually only had to do it a couple times..
Bill.Gates@microsoft.com but recently I've started useing George.Bush@whitehouse.gov
I used to use something similar, but now, there's a partial solution. For sites that require registration, I use BugMeNot.
No longer need to register.
In fact, Firefox even has an extension for it. So I simply just right click, choose BugMeNot, and get a username and password for that site.
Enjoy,
Beetle B.
The zip code for that part of DC is 20006, so I'll sometimes use that instead of 90210, at sites that insist on validating.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've always used Bob@Dole.com, since 97 or so. I use 42@Beeblebrox whenever someone asks me on the street.
The sad thing is that most of the ones we use, people would be proud to have and laugh about. Sadly that joy is shortlived as jokers like me fill it up with loving messages of support from Betty Crocker and Kellog's.
It's perfectly valid to have an email address at a TLD, though some email address format validators don't know that, and of course if you want a _real_ address of that form, you need to know the CC TLD administrators. Back in the early more-cooperative days, friends of mine ran the first Internet services on a small Caribbean island, and the TLD ran from a home in Berkeley. Several of their friends had addresses of that form. I don't know if Vince ever gave everybody on the island an email address under the CCTLD, but it was a small enough place he could have (either for account-holders only or mail-forwarding for everybody.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I've used the none@yo.biz address as a dummy for years, long before the .biz address actually started being used. (Maxis used "None-yo-biz" as an option for gender, I think, on a registration card. I liked it.) I guess that if anyone actually signs up for yo.biz, it serves them right... but apparently noone has yet...
Example.com used to not exist - it was reserved by IANA, but there were no DNS records. It now resolves to an IP address, and there's a minimal web server and no email server (and thanx to the Anon.Coward who nmap'd it!) I don't remember when they changed this - the whois record was last changed in March 2004, but I think it happened before then.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
fuck@you.com
A registered my own domain a year and a half ago, and I figured that I'd create one email address that I'd always use publicly, to reduce the spam damage.
I chose to call it spam@...
Since then, it's been fairly heavily exposed, mainly on usenet. But to my surprise, it receives almost no spam at all. A couple of Nigerian letters is all. I figure the harvesting bots might be weeding out what they perceive as "fake" addresses.
One problem though is that some online companies apparently reckon the same as the bots, as they won't accept a "spam@"-address in the on-line registration.
Been using 'john@doe.com' for years...
you can make up anything '@dodgeit.com' and go check it later if you like. No password necessary. Before dodgeit.com, I used to use nony@business.com.
I generally use not@chance.net as in there is not a chance in hades I will give you my real email address so you can send me spam.
is to allow all unknown mail to bounce to a default account for my domain, and then everytime I go to a site that requires a registration or an email, I just create a new email address for that registration:
Register for the Washington Post? washingtonpost@mydomain.com, etc.
I feel it serves several benefits for me:
1. I'm not falsifying my registration
2. I'm keeping my inbox free
3. I know who's harvesting and who isn't, and if they are, I can then bounce anything to that email address completely and yell at the company harvesting.
Please don't be rude to people who own real domains by using them, even if they're cute-sounding domains like no.com or nowhere.com, many of which are owned by old internet hackers who got the names when you could still get cool names like foo.com. It's fine to use example.com, which was set up specifically for that purpose. If you use domains that actually don't exist, you'll be hitting the TLD name servers, which really don't need that abuse either.
If you do want to be rude and pick an existing domain, at least pick somebody who's got the resources to handle it. President@whitehouse.gov, billg@microsoft.com, uce@ftc.gov. Alternatively, pick a service like mailinator.com or dodgeit.com that accept email for anybody, put it on a web page where you can retrieve it (with no password, so don't use it for anything real private), and garbage-collect old space after a while.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
before I knew that the example.com address was basically reserved for this type of purpose, I always used 2@2.com - it's the shortest to type.
http://www.jetable.org
altho you have to signup, but its still rather cool.
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
It's foo@bar.com for me.
just edit your opera search.ini
o m/mailinator/CheckMail .do?email=%s
[Search Engine 13]
Name=Mailinator
URL=http://www.mailinator.c
Query=
Key=m
Encoding=utf-8
Is post=0
Has endseparator=0
Search Type=0
VerbText=17063
Nameid=0
Position=-1
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
another method is to alias the site to the fake name. so im my case, "freshmeat@[mydomain].com" would go to the throwaway account. The only bad thing about both methods is that if you don't cull the mail box every now and then, its gets pretty large so that the easiest way to clear it is to "rm -f /var/spool/mail/myname; touch /var/spool/mail/myname; chown me:me ...etc"
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Try this :)
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
aa@bb.cc
I've always enjoyed signing up for soul sucking free registrations with eat@shit.com.
Hire me...
foo@bar.com. It's a classic. Also, sometimes I use a@b.c, but some sites don't allow it.
"If at first you don't succeed, lower your standards."
My favorite fill-in address. I'm surprised it doesn't have more of a google following, although it hasn't actually been "valid" (in the fuck-a-spammer sense) for a number of years. Still, it seems like it should be a pretty clear indication to an address-demanding site/service, of how the user expects them to make use of the information...
Of course, if a fill-in form is ever wise to that one, I can always consult the list.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
I work an an ISP, and one of the guys I work with was lucky enough to get somedomain.net and somedomain.org.
.org. It's really annoying. You don't want to know how much junk mail I get. I also get a lot of Failed Mail messages from people who pretended to be someone@somedomain.net. I think that was one of the default addresses in some company's router once upon a time.
Both of them point at our mail server...
I now get all mail for postmaster@somedomain.net and
PLEASE! Don't use those domains. We've got it all going through a junk mail filter now which is stopping a lot of stuff, but if you're using that anywhere, please change it to an address that either belongs to you or doesn't belong to anyone at all!
Thanks,
Mike
Red River Tech Support
Now I know who has signed me up for all those spam lists. I've had my soemone@somewhere.com email address for 9 years and lately over 99% of the email I receive is spam. But don't worry, I know who you are now and I will spend the rest of my days signing you up for every email list that I can find.
Thanks a lot for ruining my email address. You are no better than any spammer.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
When you send an e-mail to my spam address, it replies with a permanent failure and the reason it gives includes my real e-mail address.
I'd like an RFC compliant code to use for this (you know 542 = Permanent failure, spam).
Anyway - send an e-mail to m.harrison@craznar.com to find out my real e-mail address.
By the way - this isn't a bounce, but an SMTP reject.
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
it means meat@haggis.is
Hitler's in the fridge.
I've been using none@yer.biz for several years now, ever since the .biz domain came out.
:)
Looks like the domain is held by another squatter. Serves 'em right
First, I make sure all the check boxes are checked or unchecked so that the email is not supposed to get any "special offers", etc.
Then I fill in abuse@[the site I'm registering at]. So for real.com, I use abuse@real.com.
They aren't supposed to be sending email to the address I give them, and I don't have time to complain to their abuse department when they do, so I let them notify themselves that they are ignoring my preferences.
-Adam
If you have a gmail account you could use this method. Gmail allows you unlimited addresses of the form username+something@gmail.com. If someone asks for an address give them username+sitename@gmail.com and create a filter in gmail to automatically junk the emails to that address. (my apologies to whoever owns username@gmail.com)
Why is anything anything?
I just use a dummy MX record on a frivolous domain I own. The MX record points to 127.0.0.1 so the spammer either spams his own box, or it just times out.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
According to asdf.com, "asdf@asdf.com" is a popular fake email address so they can't use it for themselves (as I am sure they wanted to).
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Yes, someone@somewhere.com exists. People that try to reply to you, send mail to the owner of said address's inbox. At this point it is probably read by someone who intends to laugh at you.
I personally prefer TANYA.COM, it is like a Dodgeit or Mailinator.... but has both RSS and ATOM feeds.
They also don't seem to delete messages over time, which is good... the other two seem to eliminate messages when space gets low.
I sometimes refer to their own domain. For instance, if f_o_o.com wants me to register, I might enter nope@f_o_o.com.
If I feel annoyed enough, I will use whois to find the administrative email addresses for the domain. Googling is another way to get valid email addresses for the domain itself.
It serves the purpose. It punishes them a little bit. It keeps a little traffic off the Internet.
Oh dear... I can see this already.
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 555666
Are we satisfied with the length of our penis?
Symptoms: You are unsure if we at Microsoft Support are satisfied with the length of our collective penis.
Resolution: To solve the problem:
Status: Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the internet e-mail system, which thanks to our insecure e-mail apps and OSses, has gotten a lot worse than it should. Also, stupid users are to blame.
The information in this article applies to: Yourself you good for nothing spammer, Clippy.
I can tell you there are many many dvorak keyboard users out there. I accidentally registered aoeu.com (the dvorak equivalent of asdf.com) when debugging a DNS register program for an ISP. The amount of email it'd get if it weren't blocked is astounding.
I really hate it when a company tries to grab your email address (say you want to download a demo, patch, PDF etal) I find it really annoying, so the solution is to put something like "idontwantyourbloodyspam@$theirdomain" where $theirdomain is their actual domain ie: real.com, microsoft.com, mcaffee.com.
Personally I can see NO need for a company to collect my email address unless *I* want to give it to them. I dont want to be in any databases, I *dont* want to know about new versions, I dont care!
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
no@youwish.com
a@s.com is my frequently abused choice.
a@a.com is the perfect one. Short, simple, passes anything that doesn't check whether the domain exists and about 9,000 previous uses... Only problem comes when they start complaining that someone has already used it.
nuff said
And that means you too!
I generally direct it to tosspam@aol.com
It always seemed fitting to me heh
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I use noone@1waymail.com
Remember all those socks you keep losing in the laundry? Same place.
Table-ized A.I.
sorry to any of the alcoholics that work at www.bar.com... well no I'm not really sorry :)
Short and sweet, immediately leaps to mind if you're a math geek.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Before I started using a fake name that couldn't hurt anyone, I used to think up email addresses that were so bad and cheesy the people who owned them deserved my spam... my favorites: phreak@hotmail.com dude@aol.com grrrl@yahoo etc. and yes, I'm posting anonymously.
I've used john@doe.com for the longest time
Yeah, I own werd.com and I get TONS of dummy emails to that address - probably a few hundred per day at this point.
Unassim.
Johnathan@Doeworth.com
often accompanied by the false name Johnathan Doeworth.
I used to be nice, and put in something simple like fake@bogus.com
But years of those stupid forms have aggrevated me, now my address of choice is:
fuckyou@eat.shit.and.die.com
& I wish I knew the password to your heart . . . &
You can use @example.com addresses - they're guarenteed never to be in use.
Indeed, most Perl code which can check email addresses finds it syntactically valid, even though I also think it really should be @[127.0.0.1] instead.
Yes, I use not@me.com most frequently. Shorter to type.
bob@doug.com
george@jungle.com
asdf@asdf.com
I've been using fu@bar.com for as long as I can remember.
kissmy@ss.com
DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
I tend to favor no@no.com myself, useful for dumping past registration forms on websites, blah.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
I use eat@joes.com there is nothing like eating at joes... only time this backfires is if I forget my password to something and I can't get it emailed to me.
jen0r all your base are belong to... me
ANother good one is tanya.com RSS and ATOM feeds French,German,Italian,Korean,Japanese,Chinese Alternative No registration required.
Depending on the mood.
-I am an elective eunuch.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Another alternative is Tanya.com for receive only e-mail. RSS & ATOM Feeds. No Registration/Signup. E-mail never deleted. Italian, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Korean
works for me :)
No encryption can withstand the power of the Lucky Guess.
I use god@heaven.com in cc: lines for the corporate email responses when someone adds everybody remotely related to the 'issue' to an email. When anyone does a ReplyAll, they get back an undeliverable message from god@heaven.com. In other words, HE doesn't want to hear you whining. The humour is lost on a lot of people.
Has to be another popular one.
Rather than using 90210 as the zip code, I recommend everyone use 20505. It's a ZIP code belonging exclusively to the CIA.
If you're going to use a fake e-mail address, at least do other people the common courtesy of using "example.com" as the address. That site is guaranteed to never be used by anyone.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Am I the only one who actually has multiple accounts for different uses so I'm not sending spam to some poor unsuspecting person? I have my @yahoo account for things I know will not only send me spam, but will sell my address to others to send me spam as well, I have my @hotmail for public use that may or may not be harvested, and then I have one that I give just to friends.
Yes, I am female. No, I do not want to date you.
a@a.com
When we find you, we will KICK YOUR ASS!!!!!
Sincerely,
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
I am lucky enough to own the nothing.com.au domain, which I am sure is used by many many Australians for this purpose.
This account gets so much spam (>10k per day some days) that I no longer use it for email.
I run several layers of spam filtering, but 500-600 per day still make it through.
On the positive side though, it does allow me to really test the effectiveness of various spam filters.
Enough said. I'm not.
Is what I use,
but really, who cares anyway?
A friend of mine owns the bar.com domain. It gets hundreds of messages a day at the address "foo@bar.com"
a@b.com - man that is easy to type
but I usually use IJustSh@myself.com for my own personal amusement.
free online diet tracking.
We have a simple domain, being ddd.com, and we get between 10,000 to 100,000 emails a day, most of them spam. Only about one quarter of one percent are actual valid emails. It was a very annoying problem as it chewed up large amounts of bandwidth until we installed Mail Marshal which drops emails based on a white list and then kills of spam on top. YaY for Mail Marshall...
fuck@you.com gets 1080 hits!
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
auto.d20me@specialdeals4you.net I figure the spam bots will auto-reply till the heat death of the universe. Heck, the names get sold to each other, and new emails are made. Eventually this has to raise their bills by a buck. I figure once everyone starts doing it the spammers will have to deal with some heavy chat flow. VIVA LA REVOLUTION!!! Storm
my favourite is junk@junkme.com
Not just a valid email address, it expresses how I feel about giving up my email address to some idiot who's gonna sell it to spammers
asdf@asdf.com has always fullfilled my needs. (plus you can type it predominantly with your left hand)
I use: nunyabidness@biteme.com. For repeat sites, use "youalreadygotit@smegoff.com".
Not trying to be funny here, rather the reason I do this is I hope they actually read the list of emails once in a while. In the first case, it shows that they're annoying me. In the second, it gives them a subtle hint that one of their downloads they can't really count. I work from several different computers and some places just don't need to make the assumption those were individual downloads.
"Derp de derp."
Am I the only one who uses webmaster@whatever-web-site-is-requesting-my-addre ss.com ? (i.e. webmaster@nytimes.com, webmaster@latimes.com, etc). Figure it serves the poor bastards right for working at a place that wants to spam me. And if they don't spam me, well then it's no bother to the webmaster :) Really a win-win situation (at least for me)
joemama@loopback.edu
Sapere Aude - Homer
With his license to kill, and access to cutting-edge British spam research, I encourage everyone to use james.bond@mi5.gov.uk.
I was wondering if anyone else did that.
I'm also fond of making up something random every time, like sicklecell@nemia.com
I personally just use blackhole@myemailserver.com and let the email server blacklist them. Hey, I checked the box that said "Do not contact me."
anonymous@coward.net
If you think using the best-practice munge (user@domain.INVALID) is too weak (and I agree), there are still other options:
@example.com - example.com is created and held for use in documentation. It will NEVER be a valid email destination.
me@privacy.com - this one has been set up for just this use. Last time I checked, its use was encouraged.
Please have a thought for the poor admins whose servers you're playing part of DDOSing against.
I registered somewhere.com in 1995 (hey, it was free :-). After I sold my first consulting company, I named the next one after the domain. Somewhere.Com, LLC.
Spam didn't exist at the time. The first warning signs were when we'd occasionally get email bounces. Some versions of 'mail' on Unix, when unable to figure out who to return a bounce to, would send it to somewhere!name-of-the-user. Sendmail would helpfully turn that into somewhere.com, and we'd get the email.
When spam started, we started getting bounce backs. Spammers were using it as a "fake" domain. In those days somewhere's mail system was a Mac 8500 on a cable modem. Life would get very interesting when all of AOL's mail servers started throwing bounces at me as fast as they could. I had originally been bouncing messages back with messages asking people to stop--that had to change to straight rejections.
As a result of the time I was spending handling somewhere's email problems, I got into the anti-spam business. Initially writing tools to track spammers (http://www.spamwatcher.com/ is still up, although I don't know how well the spam analysis stuff is working). Later I co-founded Messagefire, an end-user anti-spam service.
In the meantime somewhere's email flow continued to climb. It's doubled every year. Hoaxes like the one about "wormalert@somewhere.com" (put it in your address book, and the fact that it's fake will cause viruses to die) didn't help. Nor did Microsoft FrontPage shipping with webmaster@somewhere.com as the default address in its templates. Axis shipped an internet enabled video camera that that (if you turned on the email feature) defaulted to sending all your security pictures to somewhere.com. (They've fixed it, but there are still cameras out there sending us a picture every 5-10 seconds.). Viruses that picked up all the references to somewhere.com off of people's address book and web caches started to account for more than a third of the email. People signing up for things with "fake" addresses accounted for a lot as well. (Why anyone would use an email address at a domain and not check to see if the domain existed first, I have no clue. Neither, apparently, do a lot of people who enter fake email addresses.) By last year we were rejecting 100,000 messages a day, of which close to 40,000 were going to someone@somewhere.com. I upgraded my DSL line to 768k just to handle the flow, and I had to limit my mail server to 100 simultaneous connections at a time.
This year we sold Messagefire to a Seattle company called MessageGate, and I now work for them. We use somewhere.com to stress test our enterprise anti-spam and compliance software. That happened only just in time; my router was starting to fail frequently under the load. Now the mail's on a high-bandwidth connection with multiple machines to handle the load--I just pick up the legitimate addresses after the spam has been filtered out.
I haven't looked in on it in several months, but we did let the email run unthrottled once early this year. After a few hours we were looking at enough bandwidth saturate several T1's, and volume of at least one million messages a day.
A couple things in summary.
1. Don't use fake email addresses. If you don't trust the site you are giving your email address too, then why are you doing business with them? If you're afraid of spam because you're posting your address publicly; then buy some anti-spam software. If I can manage to use legitimate email accounts on somewhere.com and not worry about spam, then obviously there's some out there that works well. I've been posting on usenet and the web using nazgul@somewhere.com for the past 9 years. The spammers definitely have my address. So what?
2. If you're going to make up a domain name, then *check* first to see if it's real! Better yet, don't. Just because it's not real now doesn't mean it won't be later. Use example.{com,net,org} if you must.
3. I see a number of people here s
fuck@you.com and horse@horse.org
Using the keys under your left hand on a QWERTY keyboard is all very well, but it does happen to piss off those whose actual address uses those keys. We have a small association (the Australian Flying Disc Association, or AFDA) and have had our email shut down on numerous occasions our email has been overloaded by junk sent to safd@afda.com and the like.
If we ran our own server, sure, we could block certain addresses, but we have a small hosted site, and don't have that control. A bit of consideration when choosing your fake addresses wouldn't go astray.
is what I use, either that or my spam account which is kryptanian@yahoo.com (feel free to e-mail me spammers, i don't read it ever)
Hmmm, I have 5 mod pts, its time to metamod, and on top of that I have to meta-metamod? When do I get to read slashdot?
I know, almost certainly don't notice it lost among the millions of emails that they collect. But I figure that if I'm not going to give a real email, that it would be a good idea to use one that tells them what I think about they're way of collect info.
For some reason, I also always believed that I wasn't the only one using that fake email so if a couple of hundred people do the same thing I assume someone looking at the info would notice.
Since they started to use password validation thru email. I've had to use a Hotmail account where all my spam email ends up. At least the spam filter works when it's set to block everything. The only thing that gets thru are the spam from Microsoft. :(
Figures.
So? Anyone else ever used that fake id?
I always use no@thank.you. Unless it catches the ".you" being a fake, then I use no@thanks.com. I know I'm not the only one, someone in Florida uses it, too.
-bZj
.sig
a@b.com (8,820) are the actual winner of dummy e-mail address. 1@2.com follows closely those easy to type dummy address sure beat those longer one don't you think?
I have not used any of the address listed above but some of them are good ideas. With the advent of free email addresses I usually just go to hotmail or yahoo or some other free site and make up a coulpe of junk addresses and then use them for websites. That way I can check them if needed but if they get spamed who cares I will just dump it and forget it. I have used such names like haywoodjablomi and johndoe and things like that.
uce@ftc.gov
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
it was some 4 years ago when i was an intern at a company writing jsp programs. in the testing stage, since there was a mail feedback system the web site we were implementing, someone high up the food chain told us to use haha@hehe.com as the dummy email address.
the testing went on for days, i suppose we've sent thousands of email to that address, and one day, woops, we can't send mail to that address anymore. guess what? the user's mail box is full! oops!
we told our boss about it, he said, what? it's a real email address? we've been bombing it since our shop opened!
Dummy e-mail addresses aren't. Or at least not that one. It reach me, including the questions if it is real. (But not too often recently - I've mostly stopped reading it due to people abusing it and it thus getting way too much spam...) maybe@yes.no belongs to a friend of mine and is much worse, though. Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
...my suggestion about using an impossible domain was connected to stopping the private (non-spam) email that was occasionally bounced on to me. Including, in one case, credit card details.
see: aoeu.info
(i am a dvorak user btw)
noway@forget.it
Just to state that there's no way in hell I'm ever going to type in a real address. My apologies to the forget.it postmaster.
I found the perfect domain for my throw away mail, its catchy, easy to remember and has (well had not checked for a while) web mail ... fuckyou.co.uk simply the best!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
That's the one I use! But, if the adress is worth watching for a few hours or a few days, then "www.jetable.org" is the place to go. They create a dummy adress linked to your real adress for the lengh of time specified, then it's gone!
and yodaddy@yodaddy.com
a co-worker of mine though yodaddy.com would be a cool domain, and it was available....
after he got the email setup, his service provider had problems for a few days keeping up with the email that finally found a home....
postmaster@127.0.0.1o u@127.0.0.1
webmaster@127.0.0.1
fuck_y
many places allow just numbers for the domain. the only places it doesn't work are the email verification registration forms.
Joe 2-Keg (@127.0.0.1)
-There's no place like localhost
Whenever I fill out online forms requiring my email address, I always enter postmaster@[current domain requesting my email].
Let them receive their own spam.
Popisms.com - Connecting pop culture
satan@hell.com
or the popular
president@whitehouse.org
noneof@yourbusiness.com
is my favorite to use...
Photons have mass!!?? I didn't even know they were Catholic...
Sure, a dummy email address will keep YOU from getting spam, but you may actually be dumping the problem in someone else's lap. Even if it's not a valid email address, it may still be taxing the bandwidth and SMTP processing time at that domain -- so it's costing money and/or time to somebody.
What you really need is a kick-ass email control system (akin to disposable addresses, but much more powerful), like this.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
I've used this one for years. Lately, I'm encountering "that address is already registered" more and more often.
I guess I should be a tad more original...
because it is the shortest thing I can think of and b.com doesn't really exist as a.com thru z.com are all owned by the same guy and are not really used.
no@no.com for many years. Gets my point across ;)
I get a free email address that I don't use, just check it often enough to keep it active. Whenever I sign any forms, I give them My Spam address.
This site has been put together for one purpose: To count the number of messages recieved. When people post messages in newsgroups (usenet), they will often place "nospam" or "spam" in front of their email domain in order to stop spammers picking up their email address. This domain monitors all emails sent to @spamhotmail.com and counts the results.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
I have used no@no.no for years. Though I still find it being taken already from time to time. TVGuide.com has had about 5 different locations when I sign in with it that others have chosen for their association with it.
me@yomammas.house
Says exactly how I feel about those sites that require an addy before letting you download and/or read something that is free.
4 years ago I was testing a mail server install and set my new machine as the Mail eXchanger for forget.it which was "sleeping" in the dns of my employer (Yes, it's a valid italian domain). The plan was to create a couple dummy users to receive some test msgs..
/random string/@forget.it when asked for an email address.
...
It turned out that sending test messages was not really necessary, a lot of people used
If I could still do it today I'd have a good testbed for SpamAssassin
"jklsemicolon@asdf.com"
(I am not making this up.)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Use to be a email administrator for an ISP. One of the common tales of woe were for folks with common names. Bob was the worst but I'm sure John and Sue were close seconds. This was from 1998-2000, spam was bad but nowhere as bad as it is today.
I remember our particular "Bob" was quite irate at all the junk/misrouted email he started getting but that was just the curse of a common name. Whoever sets up those domains or email addresses just has to expect it, or morbidly curious and wants to read it.
Just like have a 555-5555 phone number. It's the way it goes.
Didn't Steve Wozniak get ahold of a number like that? 888-8888, just to see who would call it? There's a flipside to everything I guess.
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
You're still an ass Erasmus
I've always used notav@ilable.com. Surprisingly, it's worked 99% of the time.
If you have to provide a real looking (validly formatted) email address, don't want it to be your real one, and don't need to respond to a confirmation email -- do this:
Say you're ordering from www.hot-pr0n.com. They want an email address, but they aren't going to send a confirmation email to it (i.e., you don't need to respond to an email they will send to activate your "account" with them). Simply use an address like this:
unlisted@hot-pr0n.com
If they send an email, it'll either come right around to them, or bounce by virtue of being a non-existent address (in which case it goes back to them also). Either way, you provide a valid looking email address, but no info about you is sent to any potentially real address at some unknown location.
These guys might be training their super duper spam filter. They can safely assume that everything that goes to that address is spam.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Quick and easy. I pity the poor fool.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
fred@sanford.son
a little surprised that i haven't seen anyone else mention this one yet (could be i just missed it). i've been using dscully@fbi.gov for about 6 years now, and a guy i know has been using fmulder@fbi.gov. additionally, when a street address is required i'll often supply that of the fbi headquarters (just so everything matches up). hmm ... maybe i should post this anonymously, just in case ... nah.
soupy twist
I never post to NNTP/USENET news groups (peeking at warez doesn't require it, right..?), but afraid for what my news reader might do behind my back, I always use news@reader.org. The domain is parked, so I would imagine the mail gets dumped into /dev/null or some blackhole mailbox.
End the FUD
You could try this:
;)
[whatever]@warez.ton.tut.fi
Guess where that one points
Can anyone:
a) Explain the behaviour of non-standard characters in Google;
b) Come up with a way to correctly search for an email address?
Here's something to start the ball rolling:
sl@shdot -> 9 Google results with only sl-shdot in evidence.
- This seems to find "sl/.shdot" and "sl-shdot".
- So I assume @ / . and - are treated as "any other characters".
sl-shdot -> 47- Appears to match slshdot and sl-shdot
- So it seems hyphens are just ignored in search criteria and results.
sl~shdot or sl$shdot or sl^shdot -> 22- Seems to be the same as a search for sl shdot
- I'd conclude these characters are converted to whitespace in results and search criteria. It would match "sl something shdot"
This discussion may be of interest too.Yes nonexistent ones are good. I often ditch .com and use something weird like none@ofyour.buisiness or blah@go.away.